There Goes the Freak Flag

Image:  Wikipedia

President Obama designated the Stonewall National Monument in 2016, the first national monument dedicated to LGBTQ history. In the decade since, Pride flags have always flown at the famed Greenwich Village site.

Until yesterday.

The National Park Service took down the rainbow flag, and said today that it's only following recently issued Interior Department rules that reduce the flags that can be flown.

The park that celebrates the origin of Pride is forbidden from flying the Pride flag.

Beam me up, Scotty. I'd rather risk my molecules getting stuck in an eternal transporter malfunction than spend another minute in Donald Trump's United States of Cruelty.

This is just the administration's latest attack on the monument. A year ago, as part of the efforts to erase transgender people from federal websites, all references to trans and queer people on the monument's webpage disappeared.

The webpage memorializing the spot where trans women and drag queens fought back against police now refers only to "LGB" people. I was incensed then that the other initials were amputated, and the administration's latest move has made me even incensed-ier.

I'm even making up words.

If this pattern of rewriting history and contradicting reality continues, the "LGB" might well disappear. Stonewall will be turned on its head and become a monument to the need to let police terrorize any group the majority fears.

And they should wear masks while doing it, since police look so darn fetching in them.

Civil Wrongs

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

The Advocate reports that a far-right federal judge in Texas has determined that LGBTQ people are no longer protected from workplace discrimination.

The ruling of Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk flies in the face of the Supreme Court's 2020 decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. In that landmark case, the justices ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

If you felt a weird twinge at a staff meeting recently, that was Judge Kacsmaryk telling you your job is on the line. And you thought it was just the lousy office coffee.

Survey Says

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Yesterday evening, as I sat down to watch the news, I just had a feeling I'd regret it.

Sure enough, PBS brought me a story about a major survey that found support for LGBTQ rights has, for the first time, gone down in the U.S. 

Note to self:  must avoid the Sunday news if I don't want to start the week depressed. Or bitchy.

The Public Religion Research Institute interviewed over 22,000 adults in 2023, and found that support for same-sex marriage dropped two percentage points, and backing for non-discrimination protections dropped four points.

The CEO of the Institute said the downward tick surprised them. I can't say it surprised me, not with all the anti-LGBTQ legislation hovering about, but it was still hard to hear. I had to watch comedy for the rest of the evening to compensate.

The drop, said the CEO, was "largely driven by party polarization." She noted that her team "saw much deeper declines, for example, among Republicans in terms of their support for these issues, whereas Democrats tended to stay relatively stable."

This would be the moment to crack that Democrats are always more stable, but I won't.

She continued, "And I think what's happening is that you see many Republican leaders in red states, really trying to amp up the volume, so to speak on LGBTQ rights, and really trying to claw back some of those rights across the country."

And really being complete assholes.

The CEO finished, "And I think that's had a spillover effect nationally in terms of the attitudes of Republicans, especially on issues with respect to LGBT rights."

The red states have floated a cloud of bigotry across the country that other Republicans are getting high on. I never thought I'd write these words, but it's a shame Nancy Reagan isn't around to urge people to Just Say No.

Bye Bye

Image:  Facebook

Two days before the New Hampshire primary, Ron DeSantis has ended his presidential bid.

All that time he spent as the governor of Florida burnishing his ultraconservative credentials, and he didn't even come close to dislodging frontrunner Donald Trump.

Geez, just how many civil rights does a fella have to take away before he gets to be head caveman?

MLK Day