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Mind your own vagina and other suggestions

We might just as well impose government by the voices in people’s heads

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anti-abortion, right wing, gay news, Washington Blade, far right

(Photo by James McNellis; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Dear Alt-Christians, does Trump’s hush money for Stormy Daniels count as a faith offering?

Pardon me if that sounds flippant. I am just trying to figure out the contours and boundaries of what passes for conservative Christianity these days. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The proximity of the anti-abortion March for Life on January 19 (which I call Mind Your Own Vagina Day) and the Women’s March on Washington on January 20, besides being an affirmation of American freedoms of speech and assembly and a good occasion for avoiding the DC Metro, seemed a fine time to pull back from the political fray for some perspective. The whole reason for these competing marches is that our goals are not the same. Sometimes they are not even coherent.

Let’s face it, there is no need to schlep down to the National Mall, or wherever they schlep out your way, only to yell “Shut up, you’re right!” at one another. If that were the case, we could just go to Walmart and snap pics of badly dressed shoppers, catch up on The Chi on Showtime, or sit around comparing our shitholes of origin. Instead, let us step out of our comfort zones and look about.

I have taken notes of what I’m hearing from my fellow citizens (and be forewarned, there is something here to offend everyone). Response to an awkward date that includes consensual sex: “If you fail to read my mind and this does not live up to my romantic fantasy, you deserve character assassination via revenge porn.” Response to Republican excesses: “This is a chance for progressives to advance the revolution.” Response to disagreeable speakers at universities: “Bar them from campus or shout them down.” Response to a business you don’t like: “Abolish capitalism.” Response to tensions with North Korea: a mistaken Hawaiian missile alert.

The voices proliferate. “Ban the police.” “Police must be given free rein.” “End incarceration.” “Block Chick-fil-A.” “Stop the Bible Museum.” “Allow anti-trans job discrimination.” “We don’t have money to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program.” “Force the terminally ill to die slow, painful deaths.” “Black and brown immigrants are dangerous.” “One more Supreme Court justice and we can revoke gay marriage and criminalize abortion.” “Abolish rules on air and water safety, workplace safety, food and drug safety, car safety, gun safety, consumer product safety, and cruelty to animals. It’s yours, do what you want.”

One stratagem of intolerance embraced by Trump is insisting that “religious freedom” entitles healthcare workers to invoke their faith in refusing to serve patients who, to quote the fictional Sister Mary Ignatius, “do the thing that makes Jesus puke.” I’d like a Gospel citation for that. Christ in Matthew Chapter 25 says to care for people.

Religious carve-outs may appear simple but can metastasize like a cancer. If a pharmacist can refuse to fill your birth control prescription because he deplores your ungodly behavior, why not allow restaurant workers to refuse a customer’s meal order based on disapproval of gluttony?

I write amid shutdown. The president refuses to negotiate with Democrats unless they surrender. Paul Ryan’s duplicity, Mitch McConnell’s cynicism, and Trump’s vacillation are all hostage to the mindless xenophobia Republicans have so long stoked. We might just as well impose government by the voices in people’s heads. Perhaps we can seek guidance on that from home schoolers David and Louise Turpin, arrested in California last week on charges of torture and child endangerment for starving their children and chaining them to the furniture.

Cable TV sages talk about our polarization as if it were a weather anomaly. I don’t blame solar flares or the monster under the bed. I blame zealots at one extreme who traffic in bigotry, suppress voters, demonize the press, and encourage Russian hackers. To a lesser extent I blame those at the opposite extreme who engage in groupthink, denounce anything short of their particular idea of utopia, and are too busy attacking moderates to build broad governing coalitions. Meanwhile, a grassroots ferment foreshadows a wave election.

Our republic will be saved by citizens who stand and fight for its values, offers this small voice in your head.

 

Richard J. Rosendall is a writer and activist. He can be reached at [email protected].

Copyright Ā© 2018 by Richard J. Rosendall. All rights reserved.

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Pinto leads Council in working with Bowser to fight crime

We must not coddle young criminals or repeat offenders

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D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The time has come for the D.C. Council to join with Mayor Bowser and pass her crime bill on a permanent basis. Councilmember Brooke Pinto worked to pass part of it in July as emergency legislation. We must accept residents are scared. Some for good reason; others because of hyped media reporting. But the spike in crime is real, though not evenly spread across the city. Most don’t know crime fell from 2021 to 2022. But it is here today, and we must do everything we can to stem it.

We can no longer coddle young criminals or repeat offenders. We can’t say if only we could deal with the root causes of crime things would be OK. While we must do that, work to provide better housing, enough food, better education, and family life, let’s also recognize most young people in our community, including those who deal with some of the same issues as the criminals, are not turning to crime. How they deal with the hardships they face, manage to go to school, and live productive lives, should be a focus so we learn from them. Recently the D.C. attorney general awarded the eighth annual Right Direction Awards. Thirty young people were saluted for overcoming significant challenges on their road to achievement. We need to share more of their stories. 

How do they manage to stay away from guns and drugs? What allows them to succeed? It’s time for the media in D.C. — the Washington Post, and TV and radio stations — to report more comprehensively on youth in the city. For every crime story reported, find a positive story to tell. There are clearly more positive stories out there. It requires more work than following the police blotter. Send reporters into schools, recreation centers, libraries, houses of worship, and they will find the good stories.  

I have long advocated for working with Congress to set up internships for D.C. students in every congressional office; 535 kids a year would get experience, good connections, and a resume boost. If we are serious about this, and have a focus on our youth beyond those who commit crimes, everyone will benefit.  

Council Judiciary Committee Chair Brooke Pinto introduced several bills including the The Active Act. This legislation would further beef up penalties for gun crimes, creating a new offense for illegal disposal of a gun or ammunition while a person is fleeing police. Then increasing penalties for endangerment with a firearm and firing many bullets at once. At the same time, she looks to expand alternatives to incarceration, creating a task force to examine possibilities for diversion programs to avoid jail time for nonviolent misdemeanor offenses such as drug possession. The Active Act also creates more hurdles for pretrial release in cases involving people charged with violent or dangerous offenses. It would require judges to issue written explanations if they decide to release before trial a person charged with committing a violent offense.  

In response to the LGBTQ community, Pinto with Council members Christina Henderson, Robert White, Charles Allen, Vincent Gray, Matt Frumin, Janeese Lewis George, and Anita Bonds, introduced the ā€œTransgender and Gender-Diverse Mortality and Fatality Review Committee Establishment Act of 2023.ā€ Pinto wrote, ā€œAlthough data are limited, some studies suggest transgender people are ā€œtwice as likely to die as cisgender peopleā€ due to ā€œheart disease, lung cancer, HIV-related illness and suicide,ā€ with trans women being ā€œtwo times as likely to dieā€ compared to cis men and ā€œthree times as likelyā€ compared to cis women being disproportionately vulnerable to the aforementioned risks, as well as to violence and murder, with one in four trans women likely to be victimized by a hate-related crime.ā€ It is anticipated the information from this committee will contribute important data and analysis, and provide important resources, for the National Center for Fatality Review and Prevention and for transgender and gender-diverse people across the country informing future strategies and interventions to drive down the disparate outcomes we are currently seeing. 

We must ensure the legal system is not a revolving door. That crimes committed with guns are punished seriously, and young people who commit violent crimes can be held without bail if they are ongoing serious threats to the community. Clearly, going easier on violent criminals is not working the way some hoped it would. Again, simply saying we will deal with it by getting to the root of crime will not deal with the crime we have today. It should happen, and will have an impact, but not right away, and we need to reduce crime today.

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.

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Is anyone else sick of Cassidy Hutchinson?

Trump loyalist feted by mainstream media after belated change of heart

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Cassidy Hutchinson (Screen capture via USA Today YouTube)

Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump loyalist who belatedly turned on her boss, the man she ā€œadored,ā€ is this week’s mainstream media obsession, turning up multiple times on CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ā€œThe View,ā€ and seemingly everywhere else. The only person getting more airtime this week is Taylor Swift, after urgent news broke that she’s dating an NFL player. (The ā€œTodayā€ show led twice with that very important story this week.)

For sure, Hutchinson’s testimony before the Jan. 6 committee in front of 13 million viewers took courage, given how many Trump supporters are inclined to violence against his critics. 

But Hutchinson remained loyal to Trump even after the Jan. 6 insurrection and planned to move to Florida for a job with him after he left the White House on Jan. 20. She initially took the advice of Trump’s attorneys to claim she didn’t recall the events leading up to the attack on the Capitol.

Some of us saw Trump for what he is back in 2015: a racist criminal and pathological liar, an ā€˜80s has-been and washed-up reality show host in orange makeup and a bad wig.

Where’s our party? 

Easily duped people like Hutchinson helped elect Trump and then supported him throughout all the too-numerous-to-mention scandals — mocking the disabled, insulting a Gold Star family, ridiculing war heroes, siding with Neo Nazis in Charlottesville, and on and on. Not to mention a botched response to a pandemic that killed more than one million Americans. Trump refused to wear a mask (we recently learned because it smeared his extensive makeup) and poked fun at Joe Biden for wearing one. 

Most of Trump’s die hard supporters jumped ship after Jan. 6, but not Cassidy Hutchinson. She even told Mark Meadows that she would ā€œtake a bulletā€ for Trump. She told ā€œThe Viewā€ that it was a ā€œdifficult momentā€ to watch former White House staffers denounce Trump after Jan. 6, due to her blind loyalty to him. She resisted her own mother’s pleas to abandon Trump and not move to Florida with him. She blamed Trump’s advisers for his bad decisions.

It all smacks of brainwashing. Anyone who is so weak willed that they are easily manipulated by the ā€œcharmsā€ of Donald Trump has no business anywhere near the White House. Hutchinson has demonstrated not just bad judgement, but disastrous judgement. 

And now that she has a book to peddle, the mainstream media predictably line up to sing her praises and she spills all sorts of tea, from Rudy Giuliani allegedly sexually assaulting her to Mark Meadows burning White House documents in his office fireplace. She didn’t follow the parade of staffers who quit after Jan. 6 and she didn’t report Meadows for allegedly destroying government property. And now we’re supposed to shell out $30 for her vapid book about finally seeing the light, long after the rest of the world had figured out Trump for the incorrigible threat to democracy that he represents. 

Hutchinson deserves our gratitude for her Jan. 6 committee testimony. But nothing more. And the mainstream media have got to stop their practice of reckless revisionist history and praising the undeserving.

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Speaker Kevin McUseless calls for Biden impeachment inquiry

Stunt will backfire on Republicans in 2024

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Congress has joined the world of the insane with Republicans calling to impeach any Democrat they disagree with. It is happening in Wisconsin to the new Supreme Court justice, and now lily-livered Kevin McUseless, facing threats from his MAGA members, announced an impeachment inquiry of President Biden.  

He could name no reason, and in fact during the nine months of Republicans investigating Biden, they have found none. Two weeks ago, he said he wouldn’t do this without a vote of the House, but moderate Republicans rightly figure this will all backfire on them, so wouldn’t agree to vote for it. Meanwhile the country is waiting for House Republicans to do their job and pass a budget, which they are unable to do. The result could close the government again. That will also backfire on them, as it will hurt so many people. 

So, what better time for Democrats, thinking independents, and any sane Republican left, those willing to put the country above their own party, and in the case of Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), even their own reelections, to just vote all these Republican clowns out of office? 

Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), who will lead the inquiry on Biden, has for the nine previous months come up with zilch — nothing meriting impeachment or even further investigation. The IRS whistleblowers’ testimony he touted was contradicted by the FBI in sworn testimony. But then it isn’t Comer asking for this impeachment inquiry, it is Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, and the MAGAs holding McUseless hostage. Those two should be arrested for criminal behavior, charged with being an embarrassment to the country. They are joined by the likes of Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), recently thrown out of a Denver theater for groping her boyfriend, vaping, taking pictures, and recording a show, Beetlejuice. This is today’s Republican Party. 

Clearly, most elected Republicans are not willing to stand up to these jokers; all afraid of the Trump cult, aka the Republican Party. They are being threatened with a primary by Trump if they do. They would lose the primary, part of the reason Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) just announced he would not run again. The Trump cult controls roughly 35% of the party and you can’t win without them. But Trump-supported primary winners have shown they lose general elections. 

I am more confident than some in a Trump/Biden replay, Biden will win by 10 million votes this time, but not get one more electoral vote. It will again be about seven or eight states. If Republicans go ahead with this impeachment Democrats will win in 2024.

As to Hunter Biden, he should be punished for anything he did wrong, like any private citizen; whether it is not paying his taxes or lying on a gun permit application. President Biden should stop inviting Hunter to the White House, and curtail his public embrace of his son. It hasn’t helped his son, and is clearly not helping his own campaign, or for that matter any other Democrat. What he does in private is his business. The president has two homes, one in Wilmington, and one in Rehoboth Beach, where he can meet with, and entertain his son. I think the president owes that to the people he is asking to support him. He owes it to the party to not put himself in positions his opponents can take advantage of.Ā 

Joe Biden has been a public servant since he was 28 years old, starting on the New Castle County Council, in Delaware, in 1970. He ran and won his Senate seat in 1972. He has never been accused of any impropriety until the Republicans decided they could make unfounded accusations for political gain. He has shown himself a decent and honest man. A man with empathy for those less fortunate; and a president with one of the most successful administrations in modern times. 

So McUseless, do your worst. Bend over for the MAGAs and get screwed. Hope it hurts. You have no balls as depicted in a recent funny meme where Barbie is shown on her knees in front of Ken, saying she finally understood; McUseless was the model for Ken. 

The country will survive McUseless and the congressional Trump cult and be stronger for it. The decent people of the country will end up winning and McUseless, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and their cronies, will be relegated to the dustbin of history with nary an asterisk to their names. If there is an asterisk it will read that they were useless, venal, and screwed up.

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.

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