It’s always strange to me to hear people talk about the “gay agenda.” Because undoubtably anyone who uses this term is anti-gay.

First of all, it’s important to remember that having an agenda isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Like when your boss asks you, “So, what’s on your agenda today?” she isn’t asking you what subversive things you’re planning on doing to ruin the company.

That said, the “LGBT community” is a misnomer. In reality, people who fall under the umbrella of LGBT are incredibly diverse in every way. There is no one thing that everyone agrees on, except maybe a desire to be treated fairly and equally under the law (though there’s no doubt far less consensus once you start talking about how to get there and what to do).

Which is why Americans For Truth About Homosexuality President Peter LaBarbera’s Aug. 19 “report” for Accuracy in Media, an organization that isn’t actually interested in accuracy so much as paranoid that the “liberal media” is out to get them, is so ridiculous.

In “Media Myths of the Homosexual-Transgender Agenda,” LaBarbera writes, “The purpose of this report is to expose and refute some of the longstanding statistical lies and propagandistic myths of the LGBT … activist movement. With media support, homosexual and leftist activists now openly campaign to banish dissenting conservative voices. This dangerous dynamic gives the homosexual-transgender lobby nearly full rein to advance its agenda.”

Ha. “Banish dissenting conservative voices,” eh? If he means that we think people who espouse the belief that LGBT people aren’t human and are incapable of love and unworthy of life don’t deserve TV air time and shouldn’t be a reporter’s go-to for an opposing viewpoint on every article about any LGBT issue, then yes, banish them. Let them assemble their banished selves in the dark realm of a place like Accuracy in Media or Americans For Truth About Homosexuality.

LaBarbera’s “report” doesn’t really offer anything new. It’s more like a “greatest hits” of anti-LGBT talking points: nobody’s born gay, sex-reassignment is mutilation, anti-gay reparative therapy works, homos die young, LGBT people make bad parents, etc.

But what I’m most interested in is what he calls “The 10% Myth.” LaBarbera tries to get to the bottom of just how many LGBT people there are in the U.S. The rough figure of 10% has been bandied about for years. LaBarbera writes, “The 10 percent myth served its purpose of projecting enormous ‘gay’ political strength when the movement was still weak.” In other words, the LGBT movement was just pretending to be 10% of the population for the political clout. And we all know that preceding to exist is a totally sound political strategy.

LaBarbera then throws out some other much smaller numbers eventually coming to the claim that LGBT people are about 3% of the population. To which I say, “Who cares?” Who cares what the percentage is? It’s not an easily ascertained or verifiable number. It’s as if LaBarbera is arguing that once a minority falls below a specific percentage then it’s okay to declare them inhuman.

And he is. Because for LaBarbera, LGBT people are inhuman. That is, in fact, the cornerstone philosophy of his hateful organization Americans For Truth About Homosexuality. The very name implies that homosexuals are liars; that homosexuality is something to be exposed as evil.

Then again, until we know the exact percentage of the U.S. population who are members of LaBarbera’s little club, how can we even be sure they even exist at all?

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By now, even if you don’t follow any kind of sportzball, you have heard about Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers player who refused to stand during the National Anthem before a game.

His reasoning is pretty compelling. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he said. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

A fair point! Because that is the sad reality of racism in America. Naturally, Kaepernick’s protest was widely respected and elicited thoughtful debate across the country.

Ha ha. No. Actually, Kaepernick hates the police and wants to kill Whitey. At least that’s the word on the street. A street where everyone who lives there is white. Although maybe a few lawn jockeys here and there for, you know, decoration.

See, white people in America are really delicate flowers who can’t handle being reminded of the total fucking atrocities committed against people of color in this country for, like, ever. Oh and saying, “But I didn’t own slaves!” is not a get-out-of-racism-free card.

So, yeah, some people are really upset with Kaepernick because they fetishize the flag and that song about the flag to the point of absurdity. Like declaring that a totally valid protest is making Betsy Ross turn in her grave and why doesn’t that guy just get back to being a gladiator for our entertainment already.

Oh, and bravo to soccer player Megan Rapinoe who knelt during the National Anthem before a recent game in solidarity with Kaepernick.

“Being a gay American, I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties,” Rapinoe said. “It’s important to have white people stand in support of people of color on this.”

Right on. Almost makes me want to watch some soccer.

Not so right on is Laura Ingraham’s response to Kaepernick’s protest. She Tweeted on Aug. 30, “Good Q: What would have happened if Kapernick [sic] disrespected the rainbow flag bef the game?”

Which is actually not a good question at all because not only did she spell his name wrong, the comparison is illogical. As many people on Twitter have already pointed out.

Writer John Howell Harris responded, “b/c gay people have a nearly 300 year history of subjugation & institutionalized oppression of black people? Is that the Q?”

Now that is a good question.

Ingraham, who has called for people to start wearing adult diapers in order to protect themselves from the possibility of sharing a public restroom with a trans person and has said that being against marriage equality “doesn’t say that you’re anti-gay people or you don’t like gay people,” is obviously not expecting an answer to her rhetorical query. She’s posing the question in order to accuse liberals of choosing gays over America, because you can’t be pro-LGBT and love your country. Nor can you raise issues that make white people uncomfortable, which means anything related to racism, which is over because Obama, obviously.

It’s a consistent conservative trope: liberals/progressives hate America because they have the audacity to point out ways that America is not “great.” Of course, it’s okay when Donald Trump does it.

The truth is, America is a country with great ideals. It’s a shame that we still have yet to live up to them.

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LGBT people have heard the phrase, “Come out, come out, wherever you are” over and over again for decades now. The idea, of course, is that coming out of the closet is the only way to change hearts and minds about who and what LGBT people are. After all, it’s hard to hate, say, lesbians, if you find out that your favorite aunt or your sister or your favorite coworker is playing for Team Lez. You’ve got to at least take a step back and rethink all of the terrible assumptions you made and ideas you’ve had about lesbians, right?

Ideally, yes. And truth be told, the fact that the closet door is no longer the major barrier it once was for so many people (but not all people. We’ve got a long way to go still) has been key in advances in LGBT rights, especially over the last five to ten years.

But then there are always going to be people who have their minds made up and no amount of people meetin’ is going to change their minds no sir no how.

And one of those people is Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

On September 1st, Paxton had dinner at the home of a transgender boy. Now, in case you didn’t know, Paxton is not a big fan of trans folks. In fact, he’s pretty much a mosquito-bitten taint about the whole thing. He recently, along with attorney generals from other states, filed a lawsuit over the Obama Administration’s recommendations that trans students be treated like human beings while at school, for example. Paxton doesn’t want people he deems perverts to pee next to “normal” Texas children.

The family extended the invitation to Paxton hoping that meeting a real trans kid would “soften” his anti-trans stance.

And so Paxton went over to their house, broke bread with them, and had a come-to-Jesus moment where he wept about what a shit head he’d been and vowed to change his ways.

Ha ha ha. Just kidding. In reality, he went over to their house, ate their food, and then continued to be a trans-phobic prick.

He shows no sign of slowing his roll on the anti-trans lawsuits, for example. He wants Texans to be able to discriminate against trans people whether it’s in the bathroom or the doctor’s office. In his twisted morality play, it’s cool for doctors to be able to refuse to treat trans patients, and for trans men and women to stay out of public restrooms.

Which is why he’s in a fight with Target ever since the retailer announced that its trans guests and employees could use whatever restroom they deemed appropriate. Not in Paxton’s Texas! He warned in May that “allowing men in women’s restrooms could lead to criminal and otherwise unwanted activity.” Because he totally gets it!

And so Paxton must have been just thrilled to have his warnings come to fruition in the form of reports that on at least two different occasions, men in different Target stores were trying to take cell phone video of women in changing rooms.

The only logical conclusion: must be those trannies!

“After this latest incident, I hope Target finally recognizes the importance of protecting its customers, especially in environments where they can be at their most vulnerable,” Paxton said in a statement, alluding to his earlier “warnings” that trans men and women are perverted heathens who should have to cross their legs and be chained to their home toilet forever and ever amen.

But hey, at least he ate blueberry cobbler with a trans kid. What a hero.

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It has come to the attention to many people, including and especially many Republicans, that Donald Trump is a Looney Tunes character come to life who would probably throw a fit and blow up the planet if, say, Vladimir Putin didn’t retweet him often enough. He’s a giant egomaniacal man-baby who cannot be trusted with any public office, let alone the presidency.

But he’s totally going to be ready by November. I mean, he gave a speech in Detroit on Aug. 8 about the economy during which protesters disrupted him many times. And he didn’t call for any of them to be carried out on a stretcher or punched in the face. What brave restraint!

Anyone who lives in Reality America knows that Trump is bad news. Even people who don’t particularly like Hillary Clinton know that.

But if you live in Right-Wing America, then reality is just a pesky detail that you keep swatting away because it’s annoying your otherwise terrifying nightmare version of the country.

Take former 700 Club co-host and founder of the African American Political Awareness Coalition Ben Kinchlow, for example. He really does NOT want Clinton to be President.

And he laid it all out in an unhinged Aug. 7 World Net Daily editorial in which he reveals a very surprising theory about President Obama’s election: Americans only elected him because he’s black.

“It wasn’t because he was the most eminently qualified individual,” Kinchlow writes, “but because America wanted to prove to itself, and the world, that it was not racist – ergo they elected Barack Hussein Obama.”

And since America did such a shitty job of “proving” we aren’t racist, we elected him again. And somehow we’ve still done a really shitty job of proving we aren’t racist and now he’s term-limited. Thanks, Obama.

And now Americans, in our quest to show the world what a wonderful, peaceful (drone strikes aside) people we are, are going to elect Hillary Clinton as our next President in order to finally put to bed the ridiculous notion that we are sexist.

Because that’s totally how presidential elections work.

Need proof? Oh, Kinchlow’s got proof. Check out these action-packed stats: “America has an extremely high percentage of voting-age college students, millennials, transsexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals and feminists,” he writes. “In addition, many normal Americans want to demonstrate that they are not racists, homophobes or anti-feminist.”

Woah, did he just use “extremely high” as a way to quantify a percentage? How high is “extremely,” exactly? Well, it’s higher than “really” and “very,” duh. And this very specific and no doubt exhaustively researched number is apparently enough to tip the election to Clinton.

But note his use of “normal Americans.” He deems LGBT people and feminists as abnormal, which isn’t surprising considering his ideology. But he also seems to be including voting-age college students and millennials as abnormal. Wut?

It’s interesting, too, that given his explanation, it appears that racist, homophobic, and sexist are the default settings for “normal Americans” who go out every four years and choose the President based on what moral failings they need to atone for.

Kinchlow states more than once that Clinton is unqualified, though he offers no examples of what qualifications she lacks. So my guess is she just doesn’t hate gays and Muslims enough. If she wanted to nab Kinchlow’s WND readers’ votes, she’d need to turn up her hatred level to “extremely high.” Thankfully she’s running to lead Reality America, not Kinchlow’s bizarre version where no one, not even him, wants to live.

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Full disclosure: I did not watch the Republican National Convention. I just don’t hate myself enough. But I have watched clips online. And my belief that Donald Trump is a brainless sociopath has only been strengthened.

The RNC this year was a clusterfuck battle over who could come across as the most paranoid and hateful. But one speaker stood out for a different reason: Peter Thiel, the first openly gay man to address the RNC. Oh, he’s also the billionaire cofounder of PayPal. So, totally average American gay.

He claimed that the economy and the government were broken and that Donald Trump could fix those things. Never mind that the income inequality he cited and the gridlock in our government can largely be attributed to Republican-supported policies and Republican obstructionism.

He also said he didn’t agree with every plank in his party’s platform – which makes sense since the platform literally says that he shouldn’t exist and if he insists on being a homo he shouldn’t have any rights.

And after dismissing the “bathroom wars” as a distraction he said, “I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all I am proud to be an American.”

And guess what? He got a standing ovation! From so many white people!

And Scott Lively, professional homophobe, is SO PISSED!

“It was with disappointment but not surprise that I read the news about the standing ovation that openly homosexual Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel received at the Republican national convention,” he wrote in a July 28 blog post. “There’s a serious problem of moral compromise on the homosexual issue in the GOP and we need to face it for what it is.”

First of all I’d like to point out that he says he “read the news,” which means even he didn’t watch the convention. It was a terrible shit show for all!

He then writes, and I am not making this up, “Ronald Reagan was not a perfect man.”

WHAT? Isn’t that considered blasphemy in conservative circles? But don’t worry, he goes on to praise the shit out of Reagan for being the godfather of conservatism.

Lively claims that the force of Reagan’s anti-gayness laid the groundwork for decades of an anti-LGBT GOP. And that things are changing and that change is BAD.

“Ronald Reagan would never have allowed Peter Thiel to use the GOP stage to legitimize homosexuality,” Lively writes, “nor would the populist conservatives of the Reagan Revolution have ever applauded it.”

If only Lively could reanimate Reagan’s corpse so that they could link arms and shout, “Down with the gays!”

“Reagan knew that true conservatism is absolutely incompatible with the ‘gay’ agenda. The two are as contradictory in principle and practice as marital fidelity and adultery,” Lively writes.

In other words, you can’t be gay and conservative. You have to pick. Never mind that there are some gay people who are voting for Trump and consider themselves conservatives. Mind you, I don’t agree with them and think that Trump is a very bad choice, but I don’t deny that they exist.

“Like the truth of the Bible, true conservatism doesn’t ‘change with the times.’ If it abandons its … resolve to protect civilization from the cancer of sexual degeneracy, then it loses all moral authority,” he writes.

Woah. The “cancer of sexual degeneracy,” huh? If that sounds extreme, remember that this is coming from the same man who claims that Nazis were gays and that’s why they were so vicious. He’s also praised the horrific anti-gay laws in Russia and had a hand in creating Uganda’s “kill the gays” bill. In other words: he’s the total package when it comes to moral authority.

Something tells me that despite the RNC recognizing Thiel’s existence, Lively will still find it in his oh-so-moral heart to vote for Trump.

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Donald Trump made history at the Republican National Convention by daring to utter a string of five letters: LGBTQ.

More specifically, he said, “Only weeks ago, in Orlando, Florida, 49 wonderful Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist. This time, the terrorist targeted the LGBTQ community. No good, and we’re going to stop it. I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology. Believe me.”

And people applauded, which prompted Trump to say, “I have to say, as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said. Thank you.”

The moment was kind of surreal. It was also completely at odds with the Republican Party platform which even GOP-apologists, the Log Cabin Republicans, said was the most anti-gay in history.

So does Trump’s stated support of LGBTQ people negate his party’s platform? Has Trump gone rogue?

Um, no. And also, no.

Let’s take a close look at what he said. What he’s vowing to protect LGBTQ people from is “a hateful foreign ideology.” In other words, he’s talking about “radical Islam,” and I believe that the applause he received was more anti-Islam rather than pro-gay. Even if he hadn’t referenced foreign terrorists, giving LGBTQ people a shout out after the horrific Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando is literally the least he could do. It’s hardly a courageous stance.

Don’t forget that Trump isn’t pro-gay. He isn’t pro-LGBTQ rights. For one thing, he did not acknowledge the hateful anti-gay ideology that exists right here in America. If anything, he pledged his support to that ideology by selecting Mike Pence, a man with a long and storied anti-LGBTQ record, as his veep.

Trump himself has said that he doesn’t support marriage equality and that he would seek to appoint Supreme Court justices that would undo that landmark decision. Granted, he changes his mind about almost everything on a rotating basis — he’s nothing if not inconsistent. But I highly doubt that he’s all of a sudden gonna be the marshal in a Pride parade.

Conservatives are, by and large, supporting Trump because they want a Republican, even a bat-shit crazy one, appointing Supreme Court justices.

That’s not to say Trump didn’t anger some with his LGBTQ reference in his convention speech.

Alexandra DeSanctis, writing for the National Review, lamented that Trump threw conservatives “under the bus.”

“Never has the party or its members questioned the right to life — or the very humanity — of LGBT people in the way Trump not-so-subtly implied,” she writes.

Lol. Wut? I’m not sure how closely DeSanctis has been following the decades-long assault on LGBT people and their families being waged by the GOP, but she apparently has a very different definition of “humanity” than I do. The right to love, to share a consensual sexual relationship with another human being, to marry, to parent, the right to exist rather than be declared crazy and dangerous and subjected to humiliating “therapy” and punitive laws — the GOP is against all of those things. It’s in their god damn platform.

While anti-gay conservatives no doubt bristled at Trump’s remarks and pro-gay conservatives cheered, the fact of the matter is Trump is a phony who will say anything to get elected. A Trump presidency would put the brakes on progressive momentum that has shepherded so many LGBT civil rights gains. Sadly Americans have a short historical memory — one need only look at Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan for proof. He’s a man looking backwards.

photo: time.com

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Was anyone really surprised that Donald Trump picked Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his co-captain for the most terrifying boat ride since the Titanic?

Pence may be best known for signing Indiana’s “just say no to gays” law, the intention of which was to give anti-gay bigots free reign to discriminate against LGBT people so long as their discrimination stemmed from a deeply held religious belief. In other words, if a baker doesn’t want to make a cake for some kind of homo wedding, he just needs to point out that “God hates fags” and he’s in the clear. As God intended.

This law gave anti-gay bigots major boners which they presumably showed off during the secret signing session Pence held for them.

After the business community freaked out, Pence signed a little fix to the bill to make it less anti-gay, but it was basically window dressing.

Ah, but Pence’s anti-gay record is much longer than just some silly little discrimination law that brought scorn heaped upon his state and resulted in a loss of millions of dollars.

In 2006 as a Senator, Pence supported amending the U.S. Constitution to ban marriage equality. He said letting same sex couples marry would bring upon “societal collapse.” Clearly he was foreshadowing a Trump-Pence presidential run.

He was also against the Employment Non Discrimination Act, claiming in 2007, “By extending the reach of federal law to cover sexual orientation, employment discrimination protections, in effect, can wage war on the free exercise of religion in the workplace.” Because, you know, protecting LGBT from discrimination is totally comparable to the horrors of war.

And speaking of war, Pence didn’t want any homos in the military because they would try to touch other privates’ privates.

Oh, and speaking of the uncontrollable sexual perversions of gays, Pence thought that money for HIV/AIDS would be much better spent on anti-gay conversion therapy. Because if you stop all those gays from being gay it’ll stop this gay disease. Oh, he also was against needle exchange programs. Because he clearly was an HIV/AIDS expert.

Remember when Donald Trump claimed that the gays loved him? That he was actually a better champion of gay rights than Hillary Clinton? Wasn’t true then, and even less true now.

“Donald Trump just doubled down on his agenda of hate and discrimination by choosing the notoriously anti-LGBTQ Mike Pence for his ticket,” Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement.

But hey, doubling down on bad decisions is right in Trump’s wheelhouse, whether in business or politics.

The Republican platform this year is one of most anti-gay in history. Clearly they are hoping that when voters go to the polls they will hate gays more than they hate Trump. Hey, it worked in the past. And the past – where women can’t get abortions, where brown people can’t vote, where gays can’t marry –  is what the Republicans love best.

photo dailysignal.com

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With the massacre of men and women at a gay club in Orlando barely behind us, one could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that this horrific hate crime had inspired some soul searching for members of the United States House. You know, “We are Orlando” and all that.

But you would be wrong. The House is one of the most dysfunctional and unproductive in history, which is no surprise considering their primary focus has been on hating President Obama and giving reach-arounds to the rich.

But they’ve always got time for discrimination against LGBT people. Right now the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is kicking around the “First Amendment Defense Act” (FADA) which, you guessed it, uses “freedom of religion” as a shield for anti LGBT bias.

According to the House summary, FADA “prohibits the federal government from taking discriminatory action against a person on the basis that such person believes or acts in accordance with a religious belief or moral conviction that: (1) marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or (2) sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

By “discriminatory action” they mean that the federal government can’t fine, revoke tax-exempt status, deny grants or contracts, or deny any federal benefits to a person who is blatantly discriminating against LGBT people as long as that person claims that Jesus made them do it. (I know it says “regardless of religious affiliation,” but I have my doubts that FADA’s supporters are totally embracing Muslims here).

It’s not hard to see why “flail and panic” bills like FADA (and like the laws we’ve seen pass in states like North Carolina) are popping up at all levels of government. Conservatives are hella pissed about marriage equality and this is their way of stomping their feet and gnashing their teeth. In other words, it’s a legislative temper tantrum.

FADA’s sponsor, Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), has a storied anti-equality voting record. In fact, the Conservative Review gives him a “Liberty Score” of 95, which means he’s an A student on the right. Conversely, he has a zero on the Human Rights Campaign’s Congressional Scorecard.

Back in April, Labrador told News Radio 1310’s Bill Colley, “We’re just trying to protect the individual from punishment by the federal government for believing in a particular belief system.”

This is not exactly accurate. FADA defines “person” as “any person regardless of religious affiliation, including corporations and other entities regardless of for-profit or nonprofit status.” Well, that about covers it.

In the interview, Labrador referred to marriage equality as “something that our culture up to recently did not accept, and frankly I still don’t believe that it accepts, because it was five robed justices that made that decision. It wasn’t the states that made the decision.”

Mind you, if the case had gone the other way, I have no doubt he’d be singing the praises of those robed justices.

In a press release from last year (injustice and justice alike often move slowly) Labrador said, “Our bill ensures that the federal government does not penalize Americans for following their religious beliefs or moral convictions on traditional marriage. Our bill shields against federal intrusion without taking anything away from anyone.”

Without taking anything away from anyone? Well, I suppose if you don’t consider civil rights a something and don’t consider LGBT people, well, people. It’s convenient to present this bill as if it’s just maintaining some harmless status quo, but in reality it provides sweeping protections for anti-LGBT bigotry. Bigotry that taxpayers would essentially be subsidizing.

Photo: dailysignal.com

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Remember when FEMA put all of those people in North Carolina in trailers after the streets were flooded with the pee of transgender men and women who weren’t allowed to use public restrooms?

No? Huh, me neither. I guess North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory gets a different version of the FEMA newsletter. One an aide is apparently typing up and handing out just to fuck with him.

In a move that only the most hateful and ignorant people will applaud, McCrory asked that $500,000 be taken from the state’s disaster relief fund in order to help pay for the state’s lawsuit supporting HB2, the anti-LGBT bill that has been taking the state by storm. Figuratively. Although now that state disaster money is being pissed away in order to fight for the right to discriminate, “taking the state by storm” could take on a literal meaning as well.

There’s a whole heap of suing going on in North Carolina. First, the Department of Justice is suing the state over HB2 because it violates the civil rights act. But North Carolina didn’t like that much and decided it would sue the federal government right back.

North Carolina’s Attorney General is Roy Cooper, a Democrat who is hoping to become the state’s next governor. He has refused to defend HB2 because it’s “some bullshit.” OK, he didn’t really say that. But he did call it a “national embarrassment,” which is pretty much the same thing.

And since Cooper won’t defend the law, McCrory has hired outside lawyers to do it and outside lawyers don’t come for free. Or for cheap. Hence the half a million dollars being pilfered from a fund that helps pay for silly things like “relief” from “disaster.” Surely not something the fine people of North Carolina are worried about. It’s not like their state is vulnerable to flooding or hurricanes or tornadoes. And it’s not like the entire state shuts the fuck down if snow sticks to the ground. So I’m sure everything will be fine.

HB2 is priority #1, obviously, come Hell or high water.

Not even economic catastrophe has been enough to sway Republican lawmakers that a bill specifically designed to discriminate against LGBT people, even going so far as to limit the public restroom use of transgender men and women, was maybe a bad idea. Google, PayPal and now the NBA have pulled or are threatening to pull investments in the state. The 2017 All Star Game is scheduled to take place in Charlotte and the NBA has already said that if HB2 doesn’t change drastically or disappear by the end of the summer, they’ll take their balls and go elsewhere.

Lawmakers have made some very minor changes to the law, but nothing that makes it much better for LGBT people. And the NBA has called foul.

“We have been engaged in dialogue with numerous groups at the city and state levels, but we do not endorse the version of the bill that we understand is currently before the legislature,” the NBA and the Charlotte Hornets said in a joint statement. “We remain committed to our guiding principles of inclusion, mutual respect and equal protections for all. We continue to believe that constructive engagement with all sides is the right path forward. There has been no new decision made regarding the 2017 NBA All-Star Game.”

In other words, the ball is back in McCrory’s court. But it remains to be seen whether he will continue to be obsessed with the balls that are or aren’t in some of his constituent’s pants.

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I went to go see Finding Dory with my son and I feel compelled to report that there is no transgender stingray featured in the film. I repeat: there is no trans-ray featured in the film. At least not that I saw. I mean, one scene features hundreds of them swimming by and there’s just no way I could clock them all.

Granted, right-wingers who probably won’t even see the movie because of Dory’s lesbian voice, have been freaking out about this ever since Ellen DeGeneres made the “announcement” in a June 10 interview.

“Here’s a little secret that I’ll tell you,” DeGeneres said, “there’s a stingray that’s becoming StingRhonda. So there’s a trans-sting in the movie.”

She was actually making a joke. A joke that many, many people on the right and the left took seriously and took to the Internets to spread the word.

And you know what? I think that’s awesome. Granted, I don’t think the joke was so awesome. DeGeneres should know better than to make fun of trans people and sea life. However, there are people who were super happy or angry that Disney would do such a thing. Which is evidence of how far trans people have come in a relatively short time.

Of course, there are still legislators all over this country who are writing laws about where trans people can pee (and poop. I mean, let’s just get it out there: transgender people poop, too. Let’s embrace all of their humanity, shall we?). However, the fact that having a transgender character in a Disney movie seemed like something that actually could happen, something that was even within the realm of possibility, is a good sign, I think.

Of course, not everyone agrees with me. Take Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, for example.

Dobson, who recently made the claim that Donald Trump is a “baby Christian” (which finally explains the tiny hands!), said on his June 24 radio show that Obama was King Chaos and that he was using trans people as a way to impose tyranny.

Now, you might remember that back in May, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education released guidelines that suggested that trans students should be treated like human beings and be allowed to get an education free from discrimination and harassment. A radical idea, I know.

Alas, too radical for Dobson. ”It seems like everything he’s tried to do has been to move us toward chaos,” Dobson said. “Chaos in the military. Chaos in medicine, certainly. Chaos in the family, and in marriage. Chaos in the judiciary and in the courts. Chaos in the economy. Chaos in every branch of government. Chaos in education, from kindergarten through the largest and most influential of the universities. It’s been chaos and now he’s trying to tell parents how to raise their children and that will be the most chaotic of all because that leads towards the next generation. He gets control of the next generation, then his predecessors will have an easier time of controlling us and that is what it comes down to. It comes down to tyranny.”

Honestly, his argument doesn’t make sense. Chaos seems to be a code word for “change.” It seems like an old white heterosexual man like Dobson doesn’t like change much. But there is no evidence, besides right-wing conspiracy theories like this one, that Barack Obama wants to become the next Pol Pot or Saddam Hussein. Then again, Hussein is Obama’s middle name…

Seriously, though. Dobson’s panic about treating trans kids with respect is illuminating. When you live in a world where President Obama is laying the groundwork for some kind of tyrannical take over, it’s no wonder that even the smallest gestures made toward trans people seems like a descent into a pit of chaos and madness. Because you’re already there.

Photo: wikipedia.com

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