What’s Different?

We went through this before, back then it was called the Lavender Scare but now it is different and scarier… they got guns and the internet.

After Libs of TikTok post, multiple bomb threats have been made at Waukesha middle school
School district, Waukesha police say threats are not credible
WPR
BY CORRINNE HESS
MARCH 18, 2024

Over the last two weeks, parents of Butler Middle School students in Waukesha have received multiple notices from district administrators about bomb threats at the school.

School district officials and the Waukesha Police Department have determined the threats are not credible.

But a grassroots advocacy group in the city believes they are connected to political battles over LGBTQ issues in the district and a social media post on the controversial Libs of TikTok targeting an openly gay staff member at the school.

“Beyond board policies, the hyper-politicization of the Waukesha School board and deep connection between multiple school board members and the Republican Party of Waukesha County has continued to fuel the fire of anti-LGBTQ+ activity in our community,” said a post by Unwavering Waukesha, a group of Waukesha parents and residents.

“Are you now or have you ever been gay?” The hearings in Washington by Senator Joseph McCarthy outed many gays and lesbians during them.

These People Are Frightened to Death”
Congressional Investigations and the Lavender Scare
National Archives
Summer 2016, Vol. 48, No. 2

By Judith AdkinsThe Red Scare, the congressional witch-hunt against Communists during the early years of the Cold War, is a well-known chapter of American history. A second scare of the same era has been much slower to make its way into public consciousness, even though it lasted far longer and directly impacted many more lives.

Beginning in the late 1940s and continuing through the 1960s, thousands of gay employees were fired or forced to resign from the federal workforce because of their sexuality. Dubbed the Lavender Scare, this wave of repression was also bound up with anti-Communism and fueled by the power of congressional investigation.

The purge followed an era in which gay people were increasingly finding each other and forming communities in urban America. During World War II, many men and women left behind the restrictions of rural or small-town life for the first time. After the war, young people poured into cities, where density and anonymity made pursuit of same-sex relationships more possible than ever.

[…]

This publicity did not, however, make homosexuality more acceptable, in part because virtually no gay people were open about their sexuality. Also, the country was in the midst of a more general sex-crime panic, stirred up by a few highly publicized cases. In this context, greater public awareness of homosexuality coincided with growing unease and, in many parts of the country, an increase in official repression. Certainly this was true in Washington, DC.

The hearings created fear and outrage against but that was it, they didn’t get death threats, they didn’t have the animosity spread around the internet, and they didn’t have brown shirted gun toting protesters.

Now a days these people are the equivalent to a lynch mob, they are out for blood, they want us dead. WPR article goes on to say,

The Libs of TikTok post on X, formally known as Twitter, had more than 3,000 retweets and more than 800 responses. Most comments were anti-LGBTQ including posts calling the educator a “groomer,” “predator” and “pedophile.”

The Republican politicians whip them up into a frenzy where they fear for their lives in the echo chamber of the far right-wing media… and they take it out on us.

Unwavering Waukesha, the grassroots group, said the policies and rhetoric have contributed to the bomb threats, affected learning for more than 700 students at Butler and left parents worried about the safety of their children.

“Unwavering Waukesha has seen social media posts from current Butler students that amount to homophobic behavior towards the Butler staff person in question,” the group said.

Nationally according to,

FBI crime statistics show anti-LGBTQ hate crimes on the rise
The Hill
By Brooke Migdon
October 16, 2023

Anti-LGBTQ hate crimes rose sharply in 2022, jumping more than 19 percent over 2021, according to the FBI’s annual crime report released Monday.

More than 11,600 hate crime incidents were reported to the FBI in 2022, the highest number recorded since the agency began tracking them in 1991. A majority of hate crimes recorded last year targeted Black people, according to the report.

This is all the result of one narcissistic candidate who want to split the country and create an authoritarian government with him sitting on the throne!

 

We can win in November! But we need to get out the vote, the polls show that the people are behind us!

Here’s How Americans Really Feel About LGBTQ Issues
Forbes
By Alison Durkee
June 5, 2023


[…]

Anti-Discrimination Protections: Americans broadly support laws forbidding LGBTQ discrimination in situations like jobs, public accommodations and housing, with PRRI’s 2022 polling finding that 80% of Americans support such laws (up from 71% in 2015), including 66% of Republicans and at least 50% support among all major religious demographics.

Businesses Refusing Services: As the Supreme Court prepares to rule on whether a Web designer can refuse to provide websites for same-sex marriages, PRRI found that 65% of Americans oppose allowing businesses to refuse services to LGBTQ customers for religious reasons—though a 57% majority of Republicans support it—and 56% said in a December 2022 Quinnipiac poll that businesses shouldn’t refuse services to same-sex couples.

We have the people behind us! They have shown there support for us in elections, do you remember the ballot question in Massachusetts about our protections? Where the "Yes" vote, which aimed to uphold the law, received around 70% of the vote compared to 30% for the "No" vote.

They are behind us we just have to get them to the voting box in November.

---

Here in Connecticut the governor is proposing an advertising campaign against bigotry and bias. I don't know how effective it be, but it is a try. A try to end the violence and bigotry against us.