Opinions
America’s descent into unreason
We must wield facts and values in fighting the theft of our republic

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. (Photo by Soniakapadia via Wikimedia Commons)
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), a member of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, believes that coastline erosion and silt deposits from rivers contribute to rises in sea level. Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Wagner claims that global warming is caused by body heat and the earth moving closer to the sun. Let us say gently that the earth’s orbit is more stable than Mr. Wagner’s.
Alas, these examples illustrate a problem that affects far more than just politicians: too many of us would rather cling to ill-informed notions than pull out our smartphones and look things up.
Even creators of fantasy do their research. Black Panther director Ryan Coogler and his design team, for example, drew inspiration from real cultures across Africa in fleshing out the imaginary Wakanda. If you are less in touch with reality than a Marvel superhero movie, you may have a problem.
Speaking in Johannesburg on July 17 in commemoration of Nelson Mandela’s centennial, former president Barack Obama said, “[For democracy] to work, we have to actually believe in an objective reality…. Without facts, there is no basis for cooperation…. Unfortunately, too much of politics today seems to reject the very concept of objective truth. People just make stuff up.” Obama did not mention his successor; he didn’t have to.
The substitution of partisan spin for investigative journalism on cable news is a big part of the problem. As a journalism tutor once said, “If someone says it’s raining and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out of the f**king window and find out which is true.”
Our aim should not figuratively be to tattoo “Stupid” on anyone’s forehead, nor to pull our punches in public debates, but to end the destructiveness that results from continually giving free, unfiltered media to demagogues who appeal to our lowest impulses. A nation of ignorant trolls will produce nothing resembling greatness in competition with other nations.
Our push-back should not be solely about current policy disputes, but the founding principles without which America exists in name only. They begin with the holding that all of us are created equal.
The threat we face was summarized on July 16 by Bree Newsome, who climbed a flagpole on the South Carolina statehouse grounds in 2015 to remove the Confederate flag: “White racists in US have shown time and again they’d rather burn the republic to the ground than have racial equality in America…. The commitment to white supremacy is stronger than commitment to western democracy.” Sadly, yes. Racism and know-nothingism poison the public square that we all must share.
It makes no sense to demonize black athletes for kneeling in protest against racist law enforcement, while praising or excusing our president’s supine behavior in Helsinki. Peaceful protest is a time-honored tradition here. Siding with a foreign despot against America is not.
Effective policymaking depends not just on facts but on sound reasoning and goodwill, which are lacking in Trumpland. To understand the embrace of President Seven Deadly Sins by white evangelicals, we need to recognize the flights of unreason that sustain their besieged worldview. For them, Trump is God’s tool, just as the Bible is a weapon.
Consider members of First Baptist Church in Luverne, Alabama, interviewed by Stephanie McCrummen in The Washington Post on July 21. Sunday school teacher Sheila Butler says that Christians are faced with “annihilation.” “Obama was acting at the behest of the Islamic nation.” Christ’s call to welcome the stranger means the “legal immigrant stranger.” Slavery’s evils are overstated, because “Slaves … got housing. They got fed. They got medical care.”
Regarding the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which opened earlier this year in Montgomery and features 800 steel monoliths hanging in a powerful evocation of lynching, Ms. Butler says it promotes violence because it will stir “feelings of revenge” in young black men. Does she also think memorials to our war dead promote violence? What about crucifixes?
I hardly know how to react to the Post article, except to note that these paranoid people vote. For the stolen children, for our stolen country, so must we.
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.

Trans rights have reached a crisis point. Thereās no other way to say it.
On March 4, CPAC speaker Michael Knowles plainly stated that āif [transgenderism] is false, then for the good of society, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely ā the whole preposterous ideology.ā
To liken transness as a mere ideology is problematic on many different counts, but that paled in comparison to Knowlesās need for us to be eradicated. Eradication rhetoric is a genocidal tool, to ask and plead for an entire subpopulation to go away in one fell swoop is murderous and brutal. Genocides begin with this kind of rhetoric, then escalate to dangerous politicians being elected to office, then escalate even more to harsh policy, then escalate yet again when those harsh policies force humans to have to do many things ā be locked in a cage, move out of the country, or even detransition, in this case.
Look no further than what happened at the southern border during Trumpās years in office, when images of migrants and their children surfaced at maximum security facilities, lying on the floor with nothing but a meager blanket and barbed wire surrounding their bodies.
Indeed, a lot of the CPAC conference was dedicated to engaging in these culture wars ā but Knowlesās statement of eradication goes beyond the normal cultural bickering. This is why trans politics are at a dangerous turning point.
Adding to this chaos are bathroom bills and sports policies that prevent trans high schoolers from accessing the bathroom they need, or playing on the right side of their sports team.
In conversations with professionals, academics, and friends, I like to mention the fact that Republicans take peoplesā rights away when they notice that those people have gained more freedom. Think of it this way: when I was in high school, in 2010, far fewer trans people were out with their identities. Transness didnāt take a center stage in culture ā be it on the left or on the right. And as a result, trans students were only attacked by bullies and in locker rooms, not by state politicians.
But the rise of Gen Z has witnessed many high schoolers now flouting gender norms, going by nonbinary pronouns, and being proud of their gender variance. Moreover, society is filled with many more trans models and celebrities. When our presence becomes celebrated and known, Republicans will then take the necessary tools to push us back into the closet.
Whatās adding to the concern is the rise of smarter Republican candidates for the 2024 election who have exactly the same feelings of Trump but with higher intellects. Ron DeSantis is an example of a presidential contender who mirrors Trumpās bigotry and policies but is far more targeted and intelligent in his approach to public speaking and politics. Indeed, Democrats should be more afraid of DeSantis than of Trump.
On an end note, I like to summon an old saying by the late Martin Luther King. āThe arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.ā No matter how much cruelty Republicans will put us through, they wonāt succeed in the long run. More and more of society is catching up to the fact that trans people deserve respect and fairness. There will come a day when we have to sigh less and less about the state of our rights.
Isaac AmendĀ (he/him/his) is a trans man and young professional in the D.C. area. He was featured on National Geographicās āGender Revolutionā in 2017 as a student at Yale University. Amend is also on the board of the LGBT Democrats of Virginia. Find him on Instagram @isaacamend.
Opinions
The āFind Outā generation: A new generation for a new America
We are willing to face down the forces of status quo

In an op-ed I wrote in April entitled āOn Gun Violence, the New Generation Will Not Be Silenced,ā I wrote about Tennessee State Representative Justin Thomas and Justin Pearson being expelled from the Tennessee Legislature.
Since then, both have been reinstated by local county governing boards that sent them back to the legislature unanimously. Letās recall they and the remaining legislator Gloria Johnsonās ācrime,ā was deciding enough was enough by protesting against gun violence on the legislative floor. The national support they have received since then has been enormous.
Similarly, in Montana, Zooey Zephyr, the first transgender legislator there, was silenced by the Republican majority legislature there, being censured (prevented from public speaking) for saying there would be āblood on the handsā of members that voted on an anti-trans piece of legislation.
Zephyr and the āTennessee Three,ā as theyāve come to be called, are part of a new generation of leaders in America, or the āfind outā generation that wonāt settle for business as usual and are willing to face down the forces of status quo that want to maintain a system built on White supremacy and assimilation.
They follow a lineage of resistance of those willing to cause āgood trouble,ā as the late Congressman John Lewis once said. As the former head of the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee in the 60s, Lewis was arrested multiple times and was part of the Tennessee sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Nashville. (He would later, in 2016, bring Congressional House proceedings to a halt in a protest against gun violence.)
Justin Jones himself has been arrested 13 times for non-violent protest and jokes that one of the reasons he ran for the state legislature is that āmembers of the Tennessee Legislature canāt be arrested,ā which is true, at least while in session. But Justinās arrests are part of the tradition of the civil rights movement in the South. Tennessee was indeed the home resistance.
In May of 1960, over 150 students were arrested by the police for attempting to desegregate lunch counters in downtown Nashville. During the trial, the students, including Diane Nash, were defended by a group of 13 lawyers, headed by Z. Alexander Looby, a Black lawyer from the British West Indies, whose house was later bombed by segregationists. Looby and his wife were thankfully unharmed.
Later that day, 3,000 protesters marched to Nashville City Hall to confront Mayor Ben West to demand something be done about the violence. He agreed the lunch counters should be desegregated but that it should be up to the store managers.
The city later reached an agreement to desegregate numerous stores before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited desegregation altogether. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. later came to Nashville, saying he ādid not come to bring inspiration, but to find it.ā
Meanwhile, in Montana, Zooey Zephyr, the first transgender state legislator in Montana, follows in the footsteps of early LGBT activists/officeholders like the late Harvey Milk of San Francisco. Zephyrās courageous stance against a majority of the legislature who voted for an anti-trans bill prohibiting gender-affirming healthcare for minors resulted in Zephyr being censured and prohibited from giving speeches on the House floor. Since then, there has been a tremendous national backlash against such fascist tactics both there and in Tennessee.
As we look ahead to Junteenth and Pride next month, Jones, Pearson, and Zephyr are visible symbols of the rise of a new generation coming up, the āfind outā generation that refuses to accept the status quo and who is willing to put everything on the line to face injustice in the name of service to their communities.
Whether it is gun violence, housing, or hate, leadership like this will create the multigenerational, intersectional leadership we need at the local, state, and federal levels in the Halls of Congress to bring about solutions to the issues we have been facing. To create a new America that works for everyone. And Iām here for it.
A millennial based in Los Angeles, Steve Dunwoody is a veteran, college educator, and community advocate.
Opinions
Pride month should be every month
Letās not keep supportive CEOs and LGBTQ police out of our parades

I find it interesting we celebrate our Pride only one month a year. I take pride in being gay all year long. I am not opposed to celebrations in June; parades and festivals are great fun. I appreciate Capital Pride naming me a Pride Hero in 2016. Those magnetic signs decorating the convertible I rode in, now adorn my refrigerator. But for me Pride in being gay is something I have all year long.
It took me many years to feel that way. I was 34 when I finally came out, sharing who I was with others. One of the factors keeping me in the closet as a young person was the desire to run for public office. That wasnāt possible as an openly gay man, even where I grew up in New York City. It was only moving to Washington, D.C., away from family and childhood friends, that finally focused me on my true self, allowing me to come to grips with who I was, a gay man.
In 1978, D.C. was a place people could feel comfortable taking those first steps toward coming out. Many people were away from their family and old friends, ready to take a step into their own reality. You could go to a bar like Rascals in Dupont Circle, meet congresspersons, congressional staff, government officials, non-profit and business CEOs, teachers and reporters, all still in the closet and not afraid they would be outed. Back in the late ā70s and early ā80s, before AIDS, many of us were still in the closet.
Thankfully, there were some who were not. In the 1978 D.C. mayoral race, won by Marion Barry, the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the gay Democratic club in D.C., played a major role in his victory. Barry openly thanked them. He was a four-term mayor who supported the LGBTQ community. It wasnāt until the end of his career, when he was a Council member from Ward 8, that he came out against gay marriage. I remember how jarring it was for so many when he stood on Freedom Plaza with some homophobic ministers, and told us he opposed our right to marry. But he was the anomaly in D.C. The work of activists over the years, I was proud to be one of them, won. The D.C. Council passed marriage equality.
In todayās troubling times the rights of women, the LGBTQ community, the African-American community, and all minorities, are at risk. With white supremacy on the rise, and anti-Semitism once again rearing its ugly head, itās important to celebrate our Pride all year long. I want every month to be a Pride month, so people in Florida will know they cannot deprive us of our rights, or erase us from their schools. So, a young boy or girl in Mississippi or Montana, who struggle with who they are, and who they love, will be able to see they are great and loved, and can live their life fully, and safely, being their true self.
I hope by the time we celebrate World Pride in D.C. in 2025, inviting the world in to see who the United States really is, we can be proud of who we are. Today that is not the case in many ways. I want a transgender person to come to the United States for World Pride and feel comfortable, not only on the streets of D.C., but anywhere in our country. I want us to be able to show off and say, here you are safe. I want the feeling I had, as a privileged white cisgender man, coming out safely in D.C., to be the feeling everyone has. To do that we will have to fight not only homophobia, but racism, and sexism. It is all interconnected and we must recognize that and join hands, if we are to be successful. While today in D.C. we have African-American Pride, Transgender Pride, Youth Pride, and Latino Pride, maybe we can all join together for World Pride. Let us have pride in each other, as well as ourselves. Let us have that pride every month, every day, and every hour, all year long.
We can do this and still have fun in June. Letās not keep LGBTQ police, and military, out of our parades. Let us be as proud of them, as they are of themselves. Let us invite the corporate entities that support us. I would be proud to march with Disney CEO Robert Iger. We will only make progress if we do so together.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist. He writes regularly for the Blade.
-
Eastern Europe3 days ago
Transgender journalist who enlisted in Ukrainian military returns to D.C.
-
Celebrity News3 days ago
There will only ever be one Tina Turner
-
Opinions3 days ago
Pride month should be every month
-
The White House5 days ago
Biden administration unveils new actions to protect youth online
-
Virginia1 day ago
Baptist group forces minister to resign from committees because he is married to man
-
Opinions4 days ago
The long exhale to recognizing same-sex unions in Namibia
-
Asia4 days ago
Activist harassed during European development bank meeting in Uzbekistan
-
Opinions5 days ago
LGBTQ teachers should be celebrated, not demonized