LGBTQIA+

 

Where to start?

            I’m old enough that I can remember a simpler world where there was just straight people and queers. As time passed people’s interactions with one another became more complicated.

LGBTQIA+

            What do all those initials mean anyway? Well, I had to look them all up. Here’s a link that explains what each letter of the acronym stands for. 

            There are other terms like binary, cisgender, etc. Since I tend to be a little thick my wife is constantly explaining them to me.

 Dumb Ass

            “What am I again babe?”

            “For the umpteenth time you’re cis!”

            “And what are my pronouns?”

            “He and dumb ass!”

            “Ha! Dumb ass isn’t a pronoun!”

            I like to dazzle her occasionally with expressions of insight and knowledge especially when it’s so obvious that I am being mocked. Being a man of a certain age I kind of lean towards the “A” anyway. We may have to rethink my pronouns.

            But what does LGBTQIA+ mean and why isn’t an “H” in there?

GAGA

            The conservative estimate is that 10% of the population identifies with one of the letters in LGBTQIA+. Ten percent. I think it’s more than that but even with that percentage we’re talking 30 million plus people in this country.

            OMG! They’re everywhere. Yes they are. At those numbers practically every family in America has an LGBTQIA+ person in their midst. They may not want to admit it. They may not want to talk about it. But they are there. What’s more they have always been there. None of this is new. Thousands of years of history acknowledge their being with us. It’s normal.

            I happen to be straight and it’s like Lady Gaga said, “I was born this way.” I could have been born under the sign of any other letter but I wasn’t.

I was born this way.

Lucky me.

            Why would I make such an outrageous comment like ‘lucky me.’ Well, no one wanted to punish me for being straight. It never came up. No one wanted to discriminate against me for being straight. No one wanted to kill me simply because I am straight. It was easy to get married and have kids. It was not an impediment to getting a job. Hippie hair was but that’s a different matter altogether. I had no trouble buying cakes.

It just doesn’t matter

            Being LGBTQIA+ is decidedly NOT okay with the majority of Conservative Republicans or the previous administration, sadly, like many others. Being LGBTQIA+ is NOT okay with Christian Nationalists like those in the Evangelical Party from the Church of Just Us. They want to impose their religious beliefs on all the rest of society. BTW that love the sinner hate the sin is a nice catchy phrase and it’s bullshit. They hate the sinner and they want the sinner punished. (Not only that, they spend way too much time contemplating the sin. It would help if they would just stop thinking so much about other people’s sex lives. That would minimize the “ick” factor considerably for them.) They want their ancient made up religious laws to apply to the secular world. They’ll tell you that they have a god given right to do that.

They don’t!

All lives matter.

Frankly my dear

            Choice not nature. Who cares? It’s supposed to be the land of the free not pick and choose who gets to be free with full equality. It isn’t just for those dressed in white robes with pointy hats. People can choose to be any letter that they want. It’s no skin off my nose. Doesn’t pose any kind of threat to me or my family or those that I choose to be my family. What my family chooses or is, is up to them.

            These bigots are NOT the victims, no matter how much they lament and beat their breasts. Sadly their LGBTQIA+ children are victims too many times. The people using the cudgels are claiming that those they are using them on are a threat simply by existing. They want them submissive. Here’s what I’ve got to say to that.

What Clark said.

So, what does LGBTQIA+ mean?

            It means that we are wonderfully and beautifully diverse.

We were born this way.

Whackacon 20

Battle Cry!

            Who is the Republican spokesliar today and what are they lying about?

            Nationally, the current Republican Party is kind of like an evil Comic Con convention crossed with an Un-AA meetings where the motto is “Quitting is for Losers” where people take a drink every time someone comes up with a new conspiracy theory to shove out to the cult.

            “Uncount the votes for Biden!”

            “Throw them out!”

            “Especially if they come from black people!”

            “Throw them out!”

            “Trump now! Trump tomorrow! Trump forever!”

            “Biden votes?! Throw them out!”

            “Throw them out!”

            “By book or buy crook!”

            “Throw the Vote!”

            “Count every legal vote except the ones for Biden!”

            “Throw them out!”

            You know Republicans don’t seem to believe in the idea of America, the Constitution, our electoral process, Americans in general, anyone not them, the teachings of Jesus, honesty, integrity, morality, well, I could go on but you know the picture. If people want to get back to the idea of America here’s a suggestion regarding Republicans currently holding any kind of office.

Throw them out!

Team Trump Steal.

            What Trumpicans are doing is telling Republican controlled states to throw the match, the game, the vote! They are telling fellow party members to commit illegal acts. They are telling party members to overthrow our form of government and replace it with Trump, the Evangelical Party’s Chosen One.

            Now here is where I’m going to compliment some Republican leaders. They are refusing to do it. Granted if the vote was fraudulent they were the ones in charge of it but they are choosing to put country before party. They are doing this in spite of threats and intimidation from those supporting “The Chosen One”. Speaking of the Chosen One the Evangelical Party is silent in regards to Republicans attempting a legal coup. Hm, legal coup doesn’t sound quite right does it? That’s because there’s no such person unless one is a Trump supporter.

Or Pool Boy Falwell Jr.

NOTE:  I really wanted to work in all of the names of the Evangelical Party leaders that supported “The Liar” but just couldn’t work out the septic flow. Just think of them all. It’s too long of a list for my purposes.

Constitution? We don’t need no stinkin’ Constitution!

            While bleating outrageous-lies-with-no-substance in public for their master about election fraud leaders of the Republican Party are trying to steal the election on non-existent technical grounds. They are also quite out in the open trying to pressure Republicans to throw out millions of legal votes cast for Biden. Just Biden. If people are serious about “stopping the steal”, an organization by convicted felon Stone, then stop Republicans from trying to do just that.

            In 34 lawsuits Republicans have yet to submit any evidence even remotely resembling massive voter fraud or any kind of fraud. Honesty is just unacceptable to them. It’s a foreign concept to them.

Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead.

Falsies.

            I really feel for Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff running for the Senate in Georgia. The Republican Party false prophets are running at full capacity in making up falsehoods about them. The false prophets can make up stuff faster than it can be denied. It’s like a game of ‘Whack a Mole’ only with conspiracy theories. It’s going to be brutal.

            Their Republican opponents are in the catbird seat. They can say that they’re for the same things because they know their fellow Republican millionaires and multi-millionaires will vote down anything that will improve the lives of poor and working class Americans. They will continue being rubber stamps for all things Trump as they continue riding the Trump train to a dark America.

Cancel their tickets.

(Yes we’re doing our part to financially support both candidates. It isn’t much. But it all helps.)

 

Pandering to the crowd

 

First off

            Jesus was a bleeding heart liberal socialist before the concepts were even invented. Black Lives Matter crowd? Jesus is in the crowd. Queers? Jesus is lovin’ up on all of them. Cakes? Jesus would have baked 5,000. Women terminating their pregnancy? Jesus is holding their hand. Immigrants? Jesus was one. Brown people? Jesus was one. (I lost some racists right there.) Brown children? Jesus would have left them in their parents’ arms.

            Jesus didn’t say I will make you fishers of Constitutional Conservatives.

            If you are Pastor of a church and call yourself a Conservative, Constitutional Conservative, Moderate Conservative, Compassionate Conservative or any other kind Conservative you might consider that you’re preaching the wrong Jesus and you should also consider getting into another line of work. If you’re encouraging unsafe medical practices like NOT wearing masks then you really really should quit and avoid any line of work where you have dominion over other humans.

Preach the teachings of Jesus

            If you’re going to preach Jesus then preach Jesus: the real teachings of Jesus, the liberal teachings of Jesus. The Jesus that cares. The Jesus that didn’t back Caesar to gain political power. The socialist Jesus that told the rich guy to get rid of all of his possessions. The non-racist Jesus. The Jesus that said bring the little children to me.

That Jesus!

 Johnny Cash

            Conservative Pastors, like Republicans in office, believe that they have to pander to their Conservative constituents.

            Conservative Pastors only face that if their congregation is a mixture of liberals and conservatives with undecideds mixed liberally or conservatively throughout. If they take too strong a position either way people leave the church so they just Johnny Cash it.

The state of affairs

            On the one hand, we have Republican leaders afraid to speak their true feeling in public (though they will share them in private) because they are fearful of losing the support of Trump’s cult in their next election bid. On the other hand, we have Pastors fearful of losing their congregations if they don’t support Trump. They are putting fear of Trump before fear of the lord.

            And on the other other hand we have the Evangelical Party that embraces the evil that is Trump in order to gain power by association.

Wait just a darn minute!

            Okay I realize that we got to three hands here but I was on a roll with the ‘other hand’ imagery. I was trying to work in a little yin and yang to show some balance in the universe but I realize now that there really is no balance. I briefly considered using that little bird-in-the-hand-is-it-live-or-is-it-Memorex story but I think that people have just had enough of that story. So forging onward I will present the Evangelical Party and their support of President Donald Trump.

Now, about those Evangelicals.

            They are taking it kind of hard. God let them down. That’s never easy. They bought into Trump completely. They lined up the troops and marched them in. They never dreamed that their “Chosen One” would lose. They didn’t believe it before the vote. They didn’t believe it after the vote. Ain’t no sunshine when he’s gone.

            They may have to have their Republican allies in the Senate form a committee and start investigating why God let them down.

            We aren’t privy to all those conversations that go on behind closed doors between Evangelicals, and Republicans. Being men and women of honor I feel quite certain that they would lie their asses off if asked about their true feelings in public. (There’s something not quite right with the previous sentence.) I say that because they’ve already done it. (Bob Woodward recorded his conversations with Republicans that he wrote about in his book and they still denied things.)

           Evangelicals do the same thing. They just take a slightly different approach. They use Jesus in their denials of the obvious—that they supported an evil regime. They lied and continue to lie about Jesus.

They Lenny Bruced it. (1.31)

Baby steps

            Some in the Evangelical Party are slowly coming to grips with the fact that Biden won. Ken Copeland is not one of them. I haven’t heard what Paula White is doing. Robert Jeffress takes a step forward and then backslides a little. We haven’t heard from Evangelical Pool Boy Falwell Jr. for awhile. And quite frankly I don’t want to know what….

….goes on behind his closed door.

            They’ll have to admit that they elevated and worshiped a false idol—Trump. Some will just never do that. They’ll lick the wounds of the beast and go right back at their next targets. They are hot to make a few million women murderers. They’ll be looking for another “savior” another “Chosen One” in the political arena that they can give a thumbs up or down and then line up the cult behind them. They could try something novel.

Get with the real Jesus.