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Historic swearing in of Lisa Middleton as Palm Springs Mayor
Everything you need to know about Palm Springs Pride this weekend
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San Diego County man charged with a hate crime after homophobic attack
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US Navy Fleet Oiler & supply ship, USNS Harvey Milk launches
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Christian school asks LGBTQ children ‘to leave immediately’
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Segregation academies back in vogue, ‘Disappearing’ LGBTQ kids
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“I remember her as a whip-smart lesbian of color who stood up and fought but also offered peace and hope when possible”
By Karen Ocamb | WEST HOLLYWOOD – Urvashi Vaid was whip smart. She could look at you with some analysis spinning behind her eyes and then smile a deep broad smile and you could exhale as a shared vision started coursing through your veins — a warrior sisterhood striving and fighting for liberation.
And you didn’t even know liberation was on your wish-list.
It’s hard to register that Urvashi Vaid is gone.
Urvashi could seduce your brain with elevated and clear-spoken common sense. And damn if she couldn’t rile you up and spur you to action as she did in Sacramento in 1991 after Republican Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed AB 101, the gay rights bill he promised to sign, and with her 1993 speech at the March on Washington.
And we needed that. After years of excruciating pain losing lovers, family and friends while Ronald Reagan’s spokesperson laughed about the scourge of AIDS in the White House press room, a serious LGBTQ political movement was emerging in the late 1980s. And igniting those righteous flames of fury was this short, thin, proud lesbian of South Indian heritage who exuded the perfume of power. She knew her stuff. And she was at ease with powerbrokers, including Hollywood A+ types who made history attending an August 1991 benefit for the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, thrown by gay Hollywood manager Barry Krost, entertainment attorney Alan Hergott and Hergott’s lover, NGLTF Board co-chair Curt Shepard. Hollywood was finally showing up for AIDS benefits — but gay rights was still just too controversial. It was a very big deal.
Among our own, Urvashi would let fools yammer on with puffed-up opinions. But eventually she would halt us with a glance, a quick quip or a concise Marxist-ish dissertation on any situation and its connection to poverty, rendering you dumbstruck, agog – pick a synonym.
Urvashi was a teacher, a mentor — though I don’t think she thought of herself that way. She was merely trying to help a brother or sister — especially younger folks — learn to think differently, think for themselves, and think of themselves as part of the larger movement for civil rights.
One moment perfectly captures that for me. I was a freelancer covering the monumental 1992 Creating Change conference in Los Angeles. That was the year when esteemed gay author Paul Monette (Borrowed Time) ripped up a picture of the Pope, freaking out a lot of Catholic Latinos. I kept an eye on Urvashi and her pal Torie Osborn, head of the LA Gay & Lesbian Community Services Center, as they talked art with closeted LA City Councilmember Joel Wachs, as well as the usual leadership discussions, debates and skirmishes among activists in a heightened political year.
I also covered breakout sessions and one proved to be particularly daunting. It was a discussion about race in the gay movement. A young fierce gay Asian artist named Joel B. Tan took over the discussion and challenged my press credentials, my commitment to the movement, and my ability to report ANYTHING accurately or fairly about that meeting because I’m white. He called for a vote on whether I should be allowed to stay or get kicked out.
Some folks in the room, familiar with my reporting since the late 1980s, defended me. I was prepared to get shamefully kicked out when Joel went just a tad too far and started claiming the Task Force itself was a cauldron of white racism. In fact, the whole damn gay movement was basically a rich white gay conspiracy to get power and use everyone else as pawns.
When Joel finally took a breath, a muffled sound came from just outside the room. We looked and there was Urvashi, casually leaning on the door jamb with Phill Wilson, then co-founder of the National Black Gay & Lesbian Leadership Forum and of the LA chapter of Black and White Men Together. “What about us?” Urv asked very simply. The tension evaporated, I was allowed to stay and racism within the gay community was discussed with passion but without grandstanding. (I called Joel later and he said my report was acceptable.)
The tension eased so quickly because Urvashi had been fighting systemic racism at every level for a very long time, including within the gay community. Her power was smarts, compassion, humor — and credibility.
Not to say Urvashi was perfect. In fact, I had a serious disagreement with her over an incident that happened in Los Angeles. There was a ballot initiative that called for a new statewide Insurance Commissioner to be appointed by the governor. APLA Board Chair Dr. Scott Hitt and political consultant David Mixner opposed the initiative, which drove some AIDS activists crazy. We were in the middle of the second wave of AIDS and we needed government help. Hitt and Mixner explained that they didn’t oppose the idea, just the method: the Insurance Commissioner should be elected, not appointed. Imagine if we had a governor more horrific than Pete Wilson?
I reported that and activist writer Stuart Timmons freaked out. He wrote a 7,000 word thesis in a treading-water alternative weekly bashing Hitt and Mixner. He also showed up at my apartment screaming about how I was afraid of these prominent politicos. I was pissed — so I did my own deep dive into his tome and found people who complained that he quoted them out of context or actually changed their quotes to fit his activist premise. Eventually, we all moved on, including me since Stuart was friends with my friend Harry Hay.
But then Urvashi quoted extensively from Stuart’s disinformation piece in her book Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation. I tried to reach her but failed. I later heard her cite Stuart’s story as an example of bad gays. I fumed for a moment, then let that go, too.
Besides, Urvashi was doing so much good. And her relationship with Kate Clinton was so cool and extraordinary. I learned what a “soft butch” was — but that’s another story.
Urvashi Vaid is appropriately being lauded as an exemplary warrior for justice and civil rights. I remember her as a whip-smart lesbian of color who stood up and fought but also offered peace and hope when possible — as she did appearing with conservative gay writer/editor Andrew Sullivan on the Charlie Rose show before the 1993 march.
Last July, Urvashi was the guest on Gay USA, anchored by her friends Ann Northrop and Andy Humm. She talked about the National LGBTQ+ Women’s Survey, an American LGBTQ+ Museum — and about fighting breast cancer. Urv seemed upbeat but a burdened aura of mortality cloaked her Zoom appearance. She seemed determined to approach death as she had lived — educating people about our ongoing fight for liberation and, with a deep, broad smile and thoughtful eyes, telling the truth about her own humanity.
Karen Ocamb an award winning veteran journalist and former editor of the Los Angeles Blade has chronicled the lives of LGBTQ+ people in Southern California for over 30 plus years.
She lives in West Hollywood with her two beloved furry ‘kids’ and writes occasional commentary on issues of concern for the greater LGBTQ+ community.
Trump Judge: Christian public school teacher can out Trans kids
Christian middle school forces kids to “Say Gay.” To condemn gay friends!
Segregation academies back in vogue, ‘Disappearing’ LGBTQ kids
Christian school asks LGBTQ children ‘to leave immediately’
Dr. Nina Vasan: mental health challenges facing LGBTQ+ youth
Conservative Christians embrace tried and true segregation tactic first used against Black Americans as taxpayers foot the bill
By James Finn | DETROIT – At taxpayer-subsidized Grace Christian School in Valrico, Florida, students who are found to be transgender, bisexual, lesbian or gay will immediately be expelled, according to a trending news story.
To make clear how strongly school leaders despise LGBTQ people, administrators told parents in a June letter that homosexuality and transgender identity are on par with having sex with animals:
We believe that any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, transgender identity/lifestyle, self-identification, bestiality, incest, fornication, adultery and pornography are sinful in the sight of God and the church.
An administrator clarified for NBC News that “homosexual conduct” is not limited to sexual conduct. Merely identifying as gay or trans is grounds for immediate expulsion.
If a parent publicly disagrees with administrators on LGBTQ issues, that’s grounds for immediate expulsion too.
Thinks that harsh and anti-Christian? Think it should be out of bounds in a school that receives a sizeable chunk of its operating funds from state education vouchers? I agree, but the practice isn’t isolated and this isn’t even the worst example.
Monday was supposed to be Zoey’s first day of kindergarten at Bible Baptist Academy in DeQuincy, Louisiana, where she has been a student for two years. Instead, two days before classes started, administrators summoned her adoptive parents Emily and Jennie Parker into a meeting where they expelled Zoey on the grounds that the women are in a legal same-sex marriage.
The five-year-old spent the first day of school, which she had been very excited about, at home.
Emily and Jennie are also Zoey’s aunts. They adopted her after she lost her mother to an illness and then her father to an industrial accident. The couple say they wanted Zoey at her regular school to give her a sense of continuity and stability. But when the school found out about their recent marriage, reportedly because other parents complained, the school told their daughter to get out.
“She lost her father, she lost her mother, and now she’s losing her school, which she loves very much,” Emily told NBC News.
I wrote about a similar case a year ago when Summit Christian Academy in Oklahoma expelled a five-year old under similar circumstances. Just like Zoey, this child had been attending her school for two years. Administrators expelled her solely and explicitly because they learned her mothers are married.
* Moms for Liberty activists in Florida (the group that fought for and helped pass the state’s Don’t Say Gay law) even want gay and trans kids put in special, separate classes in public schools. *
I noted a year ago that despite many of these schools receiving significant taxpayer subsidies, discrimination against LGBTQ people is both legally and socially acceptable. Far too many people argue that these schools ought to be allowed to expel students or terminate staff — to segregate on the basis of sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
Summit Christian joins Grace Christian, Bible Baptist, and Immanuel Christian School in Virginia, all of which enforce policies that merely expressing support for LGBTQ people (on the part of students, family members, or staff) is grounds for expulsion or termination. Immanuel is the school where Vice President Mike Pence’s wife Karen taught art while the couple lived in D.C.
Pence is on the record stating that opposition to Immanuel’s discriminatory policies is equivalent to “attacking Christian education.”
In my opinion, the former vice president has it wrong. Nobody is attacking Christian education. Large majorities of Americans are calling out segregation academies, and rightly so.
As Baptist News Global has noted, private Christian education in the U.S. has a complex foundation. Prior to the mid 20th century, most private Christian schools in the U.S. were Catholic schools founded to counter implicit Protestant bias in public education. At the time, mandatory school prayers and religious teachings were often overtly Protestant.
Private Protestant schools were very rare until after the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown vs Board of Education declared that racial segregation in public schools violates the Constitution. Then, as the Baptist publication notes, they become wildly popular, especially in the South. White parents founded and sent their children to private Christian schools at a breakneck pace.
I attended one of those segregation academies in the 1970s in Gadsden, Alabama. As a child, I had no idea what the purpose of the school was — other than to teach me the universe was only 5,000 years old, Noah’s flood literally happened, and most scientists are (I swear I’m not kidding) agents of Satan.
Gadsden was about 40% Black at the time, but no Black children attended my private Christian school. Later, when my Baptist pastor father attempted unsuccessfully to integrate our congregation, I learned parents sent their kids to my school to keep them away from Black children. They said so, explicitly, in church, often shouting and enraged, citing the Bible as justification.
As Jonathan Merritt has observed in the Daily Beast, most private Protestant Christian schools operating today were founded wholly or in part as segregation academies, and many of them remain highly (though not totally) racially segregated.
When I was child, parents sent their children to private Christian schools to keep them away from Black children. Today, they often do so to keep them away from gay or trans children or from children with close LGBTQ family members. Parents and school administrators claim, the same way Christians used to claim about racist segregation, that God wants things that way.
That’s a question for theologians, but many of my Christian friends tell me nothing could be further from the truth — citing behavior and teaching from a certain Jesus of Nazareth. They tell me Jesus never would have tolerated a school kicking out a five-year-old whose parents had died. But I digress; I’m not a Christian and this is outside my bailiwick.
I am far more familiar with legal problems and social attitudes. I know the law allows blatant anti-LGBTQ segregation for religious reasons. I know conservatives have fought tooth and nail for exemptions to anti-discrimination laws on the federal and state level.
Politicians and civil rights lawyers once brought the full weight of the federal government down on racist segregation academies, stripping many of them of tax-exempt status and forcing them to end explicit racist policies. That didn’t end racist practices, but it softened them, and it’s rare today to find a private Christian school without at least some Black students.
Finding a private Christian school with LGBTQ students is rare and becoming more rare as conservative Christian parents fight to empower institutions that will keep transgender and gay students away from their kids. Stories like the ones I started this article with are becoming more common, not less common. Try a Google search. You may find the results shocking.
Moms for Liberty activists in Florida (the group that fought for and helped pass the state’s Don’t Say Gay law) even want gay and trans kids put in special, separate classes in public schools. I doubt they’ll succeed enacting any sort of law or policy along those lines, but it’s what they WANT.
It’s what a lot of conservative Christian parents say they want. They want LGBTQ people and ideas kept as far as possible from their kids. They don’t want to live in a diverse, pluralistic society. They prefer a nation where queer people are pariahs or at least where they can order their lives as if queer people were pariahs.
They don’t shy away from using tax money to pay for it.
Grace Christian School in Valrico, Florida is moderately expensive at $5,695.00 per year, but don’t think the expense stops most parents. Florida’s expanded school voucher program award went up to a maximum of $9,979.00 in 2021–22, with the average student receiving around $6,684.00 per year for tuition, fees, and transportation.
Vouchers are available to all families earning less than almost 100,000 per year, so Florida’s private Christian, anti-LGBTQ segregation academies are accessible and largely operate on the taxpayer dime.
Want to keep your kids away from queer kids? Christian schools are the way to go, and at least for now, no political or social pressure exists to stop the practice. It’s getting worse not better.
Please remember that as you head to the polls this November. If you don’t think it’s right to expel a 5 year old because her new mothers are lesbians, vote Democrat. Vote for diversity, pluralism, and respect for all.
James Finn is a columnist for the LA Blade, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected]
The preceding article was previously published by Prism & Pen– Amplifying LGBTQ voices through the art of storytelling and is republished by permission.
We see it clearly, as do other marginalized people, because we’re targets of politically inspired violence
Warning: this article contains anti-LGBTQ slurs and images/descriptions of violence readers may find traumatizing.
By James Finn | DETROIT – Did you read about the group of staid U.S. historians who just met privately with President Biden to warn him that U.S. democracy is teetering? They told him we’re closer to civil war and authoritarian rule than at any point in history since the 1860s.
Guess who knew that already? Queer people. Black people. Immigrants. Women. Politicians on the right are using us as punching bags, and violence is breaking out everywhere.
It’s not in our imaginations, and I’ll show you the data in just a minute to back that up. Then I’ll explain what that has to do with the breakdown of democracy.
But first, let’s meet some canaries.
Chuck Johnson and J.P. Singh recently told the Washington Blade a group of young men spotted them holding hands steps away from their Washington D.C. home. As the couple were returning from an evening out, the group shouted that there were “faggots” and punched them both. The couple ran, but the men chased them down. They knocked Chuck to the ground, punching and kicking him.
— Facebook and Twitter are doing almost nothing to counter growing waves of anti-LGBTQ hate speech on their platforms. —
Responding to J.P.’s 911 call, EMS rushed Chuck to the hospital where he was treated for a broken thumb and underwent surgery for a jaw broken in two places.
According to the Blade, another gay couple were attacked in D.C. under similar unprovoked circumstances on August 7, chased down by random strangers who objected to them holding hands, then called them “monkeypox faggots,” knocking them to ground, brutally punching and kicking them.
According to Pink News, Chad was first attacked when she was 14 years old in May 2021 at Florida’s Deerfield Middle School. That attack was captured on cellphone video and went viral. Chad received a lot of support and several of her attackers were arrested, but she told family she was struggling with suicidal thoughts.
On August 9th, she was attacked again by a different group of youths in her new Dania Beach neighborhood. They told her, “Don’t come around with that gay shit.”
If you click on the link in the caption, you can watch video of the attack. But fair warning, it’s shocking in its depiction of unrestrained violence and raw hatred.
Reports about Chad’s physical and mental health after the second attack are unclear, but her family are working with local LGBTQ support groups to get her counseling.
They’re a gay couple who were attacked while standing at the end of Christian’s driveway in a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah in July. A group of young men in a car spotted them hugging. They jumped out, yelling, “We don’t like gay people in our street.”
Christian tried to defend Jacob from violence by stepping in front of him. He ended up on the ground, beaten so badly he landed in the hospital diagnosed with brain swelling.
I interviewed Christian and his family earlier this month and learned that he often puts up with anti-gay slurs shouted at him in the street by random strangers.
In the last 5 days, Libs of Tiktok has tweeted and retweeted 14 posts about Boston Children's Hospital. As a result, BCH providers are being inundated in death threats and harassing calls and emails. It's now affecting their services. This is stochastic terrorism, full stop. pic.twitter.com/CEMlRsX6S4
Over the past week, nurses and doctors in Boston have received a barrage of hateful phone calls and text messages, including at least one bomb threat, inspired by anti-LGBTQ extremist Chaya Raichik of Brooklyn who tweets as Libs of Tiktok. Raichik objects to parents choosing gender-affirming care for transgender teens, and she objects to medical providers delivering that care. She used Twitter to unleash an army of Proud Boys and other haters.
Slate reporter and Harvard Law instructor Alejandra Caraballo tweeted this yesterday: “In the last 5 days, Libs of Tiktok has tweeted and retweeted 14 posts about Boston Children’s Hospital. As a result, BCH providers are being inundated in death threats and harassing calls and emails. It’s now affecting their services. This is stochastic terrorism, full stop.”
When I saw the tweet, I called a friend of mine who practices internal medicine at a different Boston hospital. As I asked him for a comment, he reminded me that we watched the 2016 election returns together at a bar in Detroit.
“I won’t say I told you so,” he said. “But I told you so.”
I remembered how fearful he became the night Donald Trump was elected. “I’m from Lebanon,” he reminded me, “and my last name broadcasts ‘Arab’ loud and clear. Trump is going to make my life hell, and since you’re a gay man, you’d better be as worried as I am.”
He told me in 2016 that minorities always become targets in nations ruled by autocrats, dictators, or wannabees. I dismissed his concerns, insisting American democracy was too strong for one man to destroy.
“So what about Boston Children’s,” I asked last night. “Have you heard about the death threats?”
“Every doctor and nurse in Boston has heard about them,” he said. “People are getting phone calls at work and even at home, just the most random shit like my friend who picked up her phone and heard, ‘We know you’re a pedophile and we’re coming for you.’ She took some sick days and left town. Can you blame her?”
“Is service really being affected?”
“Kids with cancer are having appointments deferred because of staffing shortages. What do you think?”
Libs of Tiktok is the tip of the iceberg on Twitter, where attacks against LGBTQ people are constant background noise, and where community standards meant to prohibit slurs and attacks are rarely enforced. Caraballo asks in her tweet thread, “When will Twitter do something about [Libs of TikTok] and their ability to rile up massive harassment campaigns against their targets? Last time it was Nazis at pride and drag events. This time it’s threatening pediatricians.”
According to a new study released on August 10 by the Human Rights Campaign and the Center for Countering Digital Hate, “discriminatory and inflamatory “grooming” content surge by over 400% across social media platforms” in response to Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law.
According to Christopher Kane writing in the Los Angeles Blade, major social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter are doing almost nothing to counter growing waves of anti-LGBTQ hate speech on their platforms. Both platforms claim their rules prohibit users from calling LGBTQ people pedophiles or groomers, but neither platform routinely removes such slurs, not even when users report the slurs.
According to Alexandra Martinez writing in Prism (no relationship to Prism & Pen), anti-LGBTQ arson and frequent street attacks in New York City have left queer people this summer living with a gnawing feeling of unease.
It’s not just New York City. She notes that 2021 was the deadliest year on record for LGBTQ people in the U.S., and that violence rates are surging higher in 2022.
Remember Ricky Shiffer who was shot and killed last Thursday after he tried to shoot up an Ohio FBI office? He was outraged that the FBI searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. He urged people to arm themselves and join him.
Did you know hatred of LGBTQ people is one of the reasons he supported Trump? Read this tweet, in an account deleted after his attack:
“We need to be ready for war against the communists who chemically nueter [sic] prebuscent [sic] children and call it gender transitioning, not bellyache about the arguments of 30 years ago. Save ammunition.”
Large majorities of Americans say they support LGBTQ equality. Large majorities of Americans say they believe our nation should stand for freedom and liberty for all, including for marginalized people. Large majorities of Americans support women’s reproductive freedom, support taking steps to lift up Black people, and support immigrant rights.
Large majorities of Americans want to live in a diverse, pluralistic society where everyone is free to pursue happiness and live in peace.
I wrote this column from the perspective of a queer person, but my Lebanese-American doctor friend could have written something similar from his immigrant perspective. My writer friend
Allison Gaines could have written from the perspective of a Black woman.
We share a common fear: that politically and religiously conservative white men are working as hard as they can to sow fear of the Other for personal power and privilege. Men like Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, and many more are plying the demagogue’s trade.
Leaders are spouting hate, seeking to establish or maintain minority rule, and historians are warning President Biden that they may very well succeed.
Chuck Johnson, J.P. Singh, Chad Sanford, Jacob Metcalf, Christian Peacock, and a score of nurses and doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital already know. They’ve been the targets of extreme violence in the past few weeks, directed by people using hatred of the Other to prop up their own privilege and power.
I opened this article by writing about the historians who told President Biden that we’re at a place we haven’t been since the 1860s. In the same meeting, they made a more frightening comparison.
They warned the president we’re at a very similar place to where Germany found itself in the 1930s when a demague took power by demonizing the Jews. They say a war like the one that destroyed Europe could repeat itself soon, only with the U.S. in the driver’s seat.
We worry the rest of you don’t see and hear the hatred directed against us. We worry that you’re too complacent. We don’t think you appreciate the gravity of the crisis facing our nation. We fear apathy will let the the Republican Party seize Congress and state governments this November, unleashing a process that could cement minority rule for generations.
Extremists in the Republican Party are already quietly taking over state election offices, something the Washington Post warned about last November.
Will Democratic voter turnout this November be overwhelming? Will it be enough to stop the assault on our teetering Democracy?
James Finn is a columnist for the LA Blade, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected]
The preceding article was previously published by Prism & Pen– Amplifying LGBTQ voices through the art of storytelling and is republished by permission.
Trump today supports the most right-wing, anti-trans, anti-gay candidates for state office the nation has ever seen
By James Finn | DETROIT – If you can’t guess from my headline, I don’t much care for the Log Cabin Republicans. They’re an advocacy group of gay men and a smattering of lesbians who support Republican politics and say they deserve a place at the GOP table.
I don’t dislike the Log Cabin crowd because I’m a Democrat, though. When they formed in 1977 to fight as GOP insiders against a California law banning gay teachers in public schools, they were doing vital equality work. When they they stood up for same-sex marriage nationally, they accepted a damaging political cost.
The Log Cabin Republicans of today, however, are nothing like who they used to be.
I don’t dislike them because they’re Republicans; I oppose their implacable opposition to genuine equality for LGBTQ Americans. I recoil at their recent, rapid (rabid?) embrace of anti-transgender rhetoric imported from the U.K.-based LGB Alliance, which calls supporting trans people “homophobia” and “conversion therapy.”
Mostly though, I’m shocked at Log Cabin’s unquestioning embrace of former President Donald Trump. They endorsed him for president in 2020, and they’ve made clear they’ll support him in 2024. They’re encouraging him to run again, claiming he’s a great friend to them and other LGB (but not T) people.
The truth is that Trump presided over a federal LGBTQ equality rollback that gave landlords the nod to evict gay and trans tenants, let employers freely discriminate, told business owners they could refuse to serve trans and gay customers, let medical professionals do the same, and encouraged religious people of all stripes to treat gay and trans people as second- or third-class Americans.
Trump today supports the most right-wing, anti-trans, anti-gay candidates for state office the nation has ever seen — or “like we’ve never seen” to mimic Trumpian rhetoric.
The Log Cabin crowd joined a chorus of Republicans yesterday complaining about the FBI executing a search warrant on Trump’s Mar-A-Lago golf resort, where he lives during the winter. Details are available in this news story from the Los Angeles Blade.
For background, the National Archives have been negotiating with Trump for months, asking him to comply with federal law (enacted in response to the corrupt Nixon administration) that makes all presidential communication property of the federal government. They say Trump and his aids illegally removed dozens of boxes of official documents from the White House, and they want them back.
However, sources inside the Department of Justice, speaking to reporters on background, say the federal warrant is NOT about routine documents.
They say the FBI is seeking top secret, compartmentalized intelligence (SCI) products with the potential to severely damage national security by revealing our most closely held sources and methods. For perspective, when I worked in national security as an Air Force intelligence officer, I was often briefed in dire terms that removing SCI documents from approved storage facilities would (not could) result in a long prison sentence, even in the absence of ill intent.
What do the Log Cabin Republicans think about the FBI investigation? See for yourself in a message they tweeted a few hours after Trump denounced the investigation.
Just as the patrons of Stonewall were not intimidated by police, we will not be intimidated by the weaponization of the FBI and DoJ against President Trump or his home, Mar-A-Lago… …where (as we announced hours ago) we will be holding our annual gala later this year! 👊
New York City cops raided the gay bar in 1969 as part of a routine arrangement with its Mafia owners. Mob bosses owned almost all gathering places for queer people in NYC in those days. The mob paid a regular kickback to the corrupt NYPD. In exchange, they didn’t enforce laws that banned people from wearing clothes of the “opposite” sex and that banned same-sex couples from dancing together in places where alcohol was served.
Once in a while, the NYPD would stage a raid for show, to let the public think they were enforcing vice laws. Usually, they tipped the bar off in advance and staff would warn patrons to go elsewhere for the evening. Probably by mistake, that warning didn’t happen on June 28, 1969. The NYPD showed up with a paddy wagon to find lesbians, gay men and “street queens” packing Stonewall.
When the cops started arresting the queer people who used the bar as a safe haven, a riot started that consumed Greenwich Village for three days and nights. It wasn’t the first time relatively powerless queer people fought back and refused to go peacefully to jail, but the incident captured the national imagination and fueled a movement to fight for freedom and equality.
Donald Trump is angry that a federal judge approved a warrant seeking evidence of a serious felony. His supporters are just as angry, some of them calling for violence, with the hashtag #lockandload trending on Twitter.
Clearly, Trump believes he’s so powerful that he’s above the law, and so do his supporters. They’re claiming Trump is being persecuted by political opponents, suggesting the FBI executed the warrant to plant evidence.
But that seems more than far fetched.
The Democratic Party has been funding primary candidates Trump supports, on the (some say dubious) theory that they will be easier to beat in November. The Democratic establishment WANTS Trump to run again in 2024, believing they’ll trounce him more soundly than in 2020.
The FBI investigation is apolitical, premised on the idea that no politician is so powerful that the law does not apply to them. It’s led by FBI Director Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee and Republican who is a member of the very conservative Federalist Society.
Trump has a long history of holding himself above the law, plus a history of releasing classified intelligence in the face of national security requests not to do so. Obviously, national security officials want to make sure he can’t harm U.S. interests. He arguably had that prerogative as president. He does not today as a private citizen.
Legal experts told Business Insider on background that the FBI likely found “pulverizing” evidence when searching Trump’s Mar-A-Lago office. They wouldn’t have sought a warrant if they weren’t sure what they’d find.
As USA Today columnist and former federal prosecutor Michael J. Stern tweeted today, “I have written hundreds of search warrants. Lawyers and people whose homes are being searched are routinely not present during the search. That Trump is now talking about “planted” evidence means he knows there is something damning they found.”
I have written hundreds of search warrants. Lawyers and people whose homes are being searched are routinely not present during the search. That Trump is now talking about “planted” evidence means he knows there is something damning they found. pic.twitter.com/7Z7KKs5HUy
It’s bad enough that the Log Cabin crew have abandoned their own principles, or at least what used to be their principles. But what they’re doing today is worse. They’re endorsing the Trump personality cult, seeking personal power at his coattails rather than fighting for freedom and equality for LGBTQ people.
They join many other Republicans praising Trump no matter what he says or does. They join a loud GOP chorus singing the praises of a man who would be dictator, a man who told General John Kelly that he wished his other generals would be loyal to him like Nazi generals were loyal to Adolf Hitler.
Log Cabin joins a chorus of loyalists who cheered and whistled at last week’s CPAC convention in Texas as Trump spoke for two hours providing what Texas Monthly calls “A Violent Blueprint for Seizing Power,” including sweeping plans to replace civil servants with Trump loyalists.
At the same convention, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán earned whistles and cheers as loud as Trump’s, praising authoritarian nationalism antithetical to American democratic ideals. An eastern European despot shared a Texas stage with Trump, and Republicans cheered them both.
Perhaps Log Cabin Republicans should think a little harder about Texas, where they were recently barred from participating in the state Republican Convention, which produced a platform calling gay people “abnormal” and rejecting trans identities.
That’s the Republican Party Trump is empowering. Those are the candidates he’s endorsing. Orbán’s rabid anti-LGBTQ ideology is WHY he was at CPAC, why he was cheered so loudly.
So, what’s up, Log Cabin Republicans? What have you done with your principles and integrity? Why are you slavishly supporting a man turning the GOP into a howling pack of anti-gay, anti-trans wolves?
Ask yourselves that as you think about the raid on the Stonewall Inn, about how it was an attempt by the powerful to crush the freedom of the marginalized and the powerless.
Think about that as you consider how powerful Republicans today are rallying behind Trump to try to crush us again.
James Finn is a columnist for the LA Blade, a former Air Force intelligence analyst, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected]
The preceding article was previously published by Prism & Pen– Amplifying LGBTQ voices through the art of storytelling and is republished by permission.
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