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‘Manufacturing Hysteria’: Activist Who Weaponized CRT Tells Conservatives to Make Drag Queens ‘More Lurid’

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Christopher Rufo, the far right activist who intentionally turned a college-level school of thought to examine social structures for systemic racism into a fear-mongering right-wing nationwide panic, is now focusing his attacks on LGBTQ people, by effectively weaponizing transgender identity.

Rufo, a senior fellow at the right-wing Manhattan Institute, is the man behind the right’s false panic and fury over CRT, Critical Race Theory. He’s bragged he wants to “have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory,’” and “put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.”

Now he’s applying that model to attack the LGBTQ community – especially transgender people and drag queens.

Rufo wants the right to turn a commonly used phrase, “drag queen,” one that many people both gay and straight use to refer to themselves, into something “more lurid” and sexual.

“Conservatives should start using the phrase ‘trans stripper’ in lieu of ‘drag queen,’” Rufo said openly Friday on Twitter, despite drag queens not generally being transgender. “It has a more lurid set of connotations and shifts the debate to sexualization.”

He thinks the 1.6 million people across America who identify as transgender should be victims of his weaponization of their very being.

Rufo knows what he’s doing is twisting language into an attack, and admits that when he uses the word “trans” people think “transgender,” but he outright states: “we can say that ‘trans’ is a stand-in for ‘transvestite,’” which is a word not commonly used in decades.

And then he dares the majority of Americans who do not have an issue with transgender people to “engage in language games,” which is exactly what he is doing.

He even gives away his secret formula, while claiming the left is “very good” at this:

“The trick is to shift the language in a way that is factually accurate and has a plausible claim to neutrality, but attaches a new set of connotations to the concept that shifts the debate in your favor.”

Yale professor Jason Stanley, author of the books “How Propaganda Works” and “How Fascism Works”:

Pushback has been quick. Some are mocking Rufo and others making stronger criticisms, with a frequent theme that seems to be accusing him of telling people to lie.

Written by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement. Image via NCRM.

Racist Anti-Abortion Group Plans In-Person “Straight Pride” Event in a U.S. COVID-19 Hotspot

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The National Straight Pride Coalition, the California “straight pride parade” group from last year, is back — just what we need in the midst of a pandemic.

The so-called National Straight Pride Coalition (NSPC) is planning an event in Modesto, California for August 29, 2020 — in the middle of the ongoing coronavirus epidemic — even though their 2019 event only drew dozens of attendees and 250 counter-protesters.

NSPC’s organizers told ABC 10 that the second annual Stanislaus County Straight Pride event is meant to be “a celebration of life in all of its aspects: masculinity; femininity; the natural family of man, woman, and children; children born and unborn; Western civilization; Christianity – everything which builds the culture of life.”

But the racist, Islamophobic, and anti-LGBTQ undertones of that rhetoric hides the NSPC’s secondary agenda: hijacking the racial justice movement to oppose access to reproductive healthcare.

Their event will take place in the parking lot of a Planned Parenthood to “to illustrate the horrific reality that it is the greatest mass killer of blacks in the history of our nation,” NSPC’s website says. Because abortions only make up three percent of Planned Parenthood’s services, NSPC is arguing that supporting low-cost reproductive and other health services to women is racism.

The NSPC’s website calls transgender identity “insanity,” a “psychosis,” and a “sexual pathology” and equates the LGBTQ movement with pedophilia and Satanism. The website also specifically cites “Caucasians” and “Christianity” as two of its founding principles, which is telling for a group that purports to stand-up for Black people.

Last year, Don Grundmann, NSPC’s founder, said in a Modesto City Council meeting, “We’re a totally peaceful, racist group.”

MoPride Inc., a local LGBTQ non-profit has already planned a counter-protest almost immediately upon hearing about Grundmann’s event.

“We can’t just ignore it,” the non-profit’s Pride director Zola Hayes said. “They are absolutely representative of an emboldening of far-right groups that use hateful rhetoric to galvanize their base.”

California is currently the U.S. state with the highest number of coronavirus cases.

Written by Daniel Villareal, The New Civil Rights Movement. Top Photo via NCRM

Mike Pence Blasted For Appearing with Anti-LGBTQ Extremists Three Times in Five Days

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The Vice President continues to be blatant in his support for the erosion of LGBTQ rights, and his support of those who work against us.

Vice President Mike Pence has spent three of the past five days appearing at conferences and on stage with anti-LGBTQ extremists, including one who calls gay people “terrorists” and compares them to ISIS, as well as a group that appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of anti-gay hate groups. Some are starting to notice and call him out for it.

“Less than a week after appearing at an Erick Erickson-sponsored conference, and a day after appearing with anti-LGBTQ extremist Sam Brownback, Mike Pence continues his anti-LGBTQ crusade with an appearance at an event organized by the anti-LGBTQ hate group the Alliance Defending Freedom,” the Human Rights Campaign says in an email. HRC points to the Vice President’s “close ties” to ADF, a group that HRC says “is among the most horrific of any group operating in the United States.”

The Vice President late Tuesday morning addressed the ADF, a group that successfully represented an anti-gay Christian baker at the U.S. Supreme Court and works to deprive LGBTQ people of their civil rights, while offering false narratives. Pence, speaking at the Ritz-Carlton in Arlington, Virginia, bragged that he and the Trump administration have “taken action to protect the conscience rights of doctors and nurses and healthcare providers,” and “gone to court to protect the right to religious expression in the public square,” while praising the ADF for being “there every step of the way.”

The Trump administration claims it is working to decriminalize homosexuality around the world (there do not appear to be any public reports on its progress) and yet the Vice President is bragging about his work with the ADF, a group that, according to HRC, “believes in the re-criminalization of homosexuality in the U.S. and across the globe.”

ADF also “has advocated for the sterilization of trans people,” and its “extremist views have found their way into Trump administration and state legislative actions.”

Valedictorian at Mormon University Announces at Graduation: ‘I Am Proud to Be a Gay Son of God’ – Gets Cheers

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The Mormon Church has grappled with issues relating to LGBTQ rights for years now, and recently seem to be softening on the issue. Maybe this will help them along.

The valedictorian for the top university of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stunned families, faculty, and friends on Friday when he announced he is gay.

“I stand before my family, friends and graduating class today to say that I am proud to be a gay son of God,” Matthew Easton, 24, declared at Brigham Young University’s graduation ceremony.

His acknowledgment was met with cheers and applause by many.

“I am not broken,” he said, as The Washington Post reports, sounding choked up. “I am loved and important to the plan of our great creator. Each of us are.”

“Four years ago, it would have been impossible for me to imagine that I would come out to my entire college,” Easton, who goes by “Matty” on social media, noted. “It is a phenomenal feeling. And it is a victory for me in and of itself.”

The Mormon Church has a horrific history of not only not supporting LGBTQ Mormons, but going outside of its community to attack issues like marriage equality, which it has done for decades.

So it might have surprised some when Easton kicked off his speech and early on offered congratulations to a wide variety of people, including his fellow students of color and his “LGBTQ friends.”

That elicited a “whoop,” cheers and applause from the audience, including Easton’s sister.

“You are seen. You are loved,” he told them all. And he talked about “coming to terms, not with who I thought I should be, but who the lord has made me.”

The LDS Church worked diligently to ensure the passage of California’s Prop 8 in 2008. Before that, it scuttled same-sex marriage in Hawaii, and reportedly has supported organizations dedicated to rolling back civil rights for LGBTQ people.

In 2015 the Church declared children of same-sex parents would be barred from the most definitive ceremonies the Church offers, and their parents would be “apostates” – heretics, in the vernacular. It was forced to literally declare God had changed his mind earlier this month, after reported suicides and tremendous outrage.

That change was not, by any means, an embrace of same-sex marriage or LGBTQ people, but some say they see a softening towards LGBTQ Mormons.

Image via Twitter