Split Right Down The Middle.

Zeus said, "I'll split them right down the middle.”*

That is what the conservatives are trying to do, split us right down the middle.

How a Drag Queen Event That Never Happened Forced a Library to Shut Down
In April, Drag Queen Story Hour was announced. Protests erupted, and by September, the library was forced to close. It still hasn’t reopened.
The New York Times
By John Leland
January 4, 2024

Lake Luzerne, in upstate New York, is a small mountain town of weathered clapboard houses, with a spired church on Main Street and a public library that offered internet access, a food pantry and twice-weekly story hours for children.

Last April, the library announced a one-time addition to its children’s lineup: Drag Queen Story Hour.

“We knew it would probably be controversial,” recalled Amanda Hoffman, who was the library’s director of youth services. “We didn’t expect it to be what it became.”

Over the coming months, someone called in a bomb threat to the library, a board meeting ended in punches being thrown and the library itself became so tense that Ms. Hoffman was hospitalized with stress-induced vertigo. Neighbors denounced one another as “fascists” or “predators” and complained of being doxxed, threatened and harassed.

The library never held a Drag Queen Story Hour.

Finally, this fall, most of the library’s staff and trustees quit, forcing it to shut down. After 53 years of operation, the library — named for the adjacent Rockwell Falls — has not lent a book since Sept. 26.

Split right down the middle! The drag story hour has split the town and even brought it to fist fights.

Neighbors who grew up together have been left wondering how their quiet rural town of 1,400, about an hour’s drive north of Albany, became a battleground for a nationally polarizing debate over issues of inclusion, free speech and the role of tax-funded institutions.

Of course the Bible thumpers had to get their two cents in…

Three days later, dozens of angry residents packed what is usually a sleepy meeting of the library board of trustees. As the board conducted unrelated business, Mr. Jacquard, who leads Victory Bible Baptist Church in nearby Porter Corners, demanded that he and other residents be heard. The church describes homosexuality on its website as “sinful and abominable in the sight of God.”

[…]

Other attendees accused the library of promoting “grooming,” sexual fetishism and even Marxism.

These right-wingers still believe that we chose to be LGBTQ+ and not that it is something we are born with.

I have a relative who lives up there and I have done a lot backpacking there including once trying to hike up Mt. Marcy in November but I didn’t have proper clothes.
* The Origin Of Love Lyrics by Hedwig and the Angry Inch   

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From October's Pink News...

Flight attendant makes history as first trans woman to be crowned Miss Portugal

Marina Machete, a 28-year-old flight attendant, has just made history as the first trans woman to be crowned Miss Portugal in the beauty pageant’s history. 

By Maggie Baska

October 7 2023

Machete’s groundbreaking win came on Thursday (5 October) in Borba, in the southeastern Evora region of Portugal. 

She will now compete against another trans woman – Rikkie Valerie Kollé, who won Miss Netherlands in July – in El Salvador for the title of Miss Universe, marking a huge step forward for trans women at the global beauty pageant. 

Before the competition, Machete wrote on Instagram that she was “proud to be the first trans woman to compete for the title of Miss Universe Portugal”. 

“For many years I wasn’t eligible to compete, and now it’s such an honor to be a part of this incredible group of candidates,” she added. 

In another post shared after her historic win, the trans beauty queen shared her excitement to now be heading to the Miss Universe competition in November. 

“We’re counting down to Miss Universe 2023,” Marina Machete wrote. “El Salvador, see you soon!