If you’ve been following the news at all the last couple of weeks, you may have noticed that there have been huge protests against the political failure to address climate change, led by young people, happening across the globe.
You may have also noticed that impeachment proceedings have begun against Donald Trump, prompting him to retweet threats about civil war, showing once again that comparing Trump to a child is an unfair smear of children.
Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church here in Dallas as well as a Fox News contributor, has declared: “The only impeachable offense President Trump has committed was beating Hillary Clinton in 2016. That’s the unpardonable sin for which the Democrats will never forgive him. And I do want to make this prediction this morning: If the Democrats are successful in removing the president from office, I’m afraid it will cause a civil war-like fracture in this nation from which this country will never heal.”
And Trump, who literally does nothing but watch TV all day, couldn’t tweet these words out fast enough.
Now, I’m no history major, but I seem to remember the Civil War being a BFD in this country. Maybe, just maybe, it’s not a threat the goddamn president should be gleefully repeating.
But repeat it he did, and folks who were spared having to know who Jeffress is or hear his name are spared no more. And guess what? He has a long history of being super anti-LGBTQ.
In 2013 he said that God “thought [sex] up for our enjoyment” and “gave us the equipment to enjoy it with.”
To show why gay sex was wrong, he used an analogy about plugging in a TV: “In the instruction manual it said, ‘Now plug this into a 120 outlet.’ Suppose I said, ‘Oh, I’m not going to follow those instructions; those are antiquated instructions. I’m going to plug it into a 220 outlet. It’s my TV and I can do whatever I want to with it.’ Well, it is my TV to do what I want to with it, but I’m going to blow that TV into smithereens if I put it in a 220 outlet.”
Just in case you aren’t following, in this analogy the TV plug is a penis; a 120 outlet is a vagina, and a 220 outlet is a butt.
Also, in case you weren’t aware, anal sex does not typically result in a penis being blown into smithereens. I think that’s probably oral sex. But I’m a lesbian, not a Baptist preacher, so what do I know?
Jeffress has also said that gays and lesbians are “abnormal,” live “a miserable lifestyle,” and that they “brainwash … the public to feel guilty of their bigotry toward homosexuals” through shows such as Will & Grace. He called sex between same-sex partners “a filthy practice,” and in 2011 he said, “It’s a fact that [AIDS] is a gay disease” and used this “fact” to support keeping gays out of the military.
Jeffress has also said really hateful and ignorant things about Jews and Muslims. Surprise, surprise.
And this is who the president is turning to during this time of crisis. This hateful man’s words are the words the president amplifies as the impeachment inquiry begins. This man believes that Jews are going to hell, that Islam is a religion of pedophilia and that Mormons are cult members — but he thanks God for Trump.
While there are observers who seem surprised that Trump is wildly spinning out of control, I am not one of them. This is a man who has never been held accountable for anything in his life. Then millions of idiots handed this guy an entire nation. And now that he’s messed it up with his hubris and incompetence, he’s flailing. He’s looking for somebody to blame. Because it couldn’t possibly be him that’s the problem. It must be literally everyone else.
There’s no telling what will be happening by the time you read this column, as the news cycle is more like a news cyclone tearing through the U.S. and leaving everything in its wake in shambles. And still, Republicans call both the news — and climate change — fake.
I don’t even know what to say anymore. This is not normal. And, honestly, I don’t know if anything will ever be normal again.
We have an entire political party aiding and abetting the most corrupt and incompetent president this nation has ever seen.
I was driving behind a pickup truck recently with a bumper sticker that read, “Trump 2020: Make Liberals Cry Again.” I suspect he placed that sticker before the impeachment story broke. And I suspect that nothing will happen to make him remove that sticker.
There are bad people in this world. The president is one of them. Things are going to get worse before they get better.
D’Anne Witkowski is a poet, writer and comedian living in Michigan with her wife and son. She has been writing about LGBT politics for over a decade. Follow her on Twitter @MamaDWitkowski.
You, and the other liberal members of the LGBTQ community, are the ones who have been brainwashed. You must get all of your facts from CNN or the like. You seem to think Trump is an existential threat to the progress made for gay rights in the last 30 years. The fact is, no one is going to take away the progress we’ve made – unless uniformed idiots keep trying to vote liberal socialists into power. You obviously have no clue about the real history of socialist regimes. It’s all rainbows (pun intended) in the beginning, but once those in office take hold, the first people to be lined up and shot are the “undesirables”. It has happened over and over again throughout history and no one seems to learn. Quit believing the leftist lie.
There will always be people like Fallwell and Jeffres. Fuck them. Ignore them. The masses are not on their side. People actually HAVE become more tolerant. People just want to live their life and as long as you’re not pushing your sexuality down their throats, they probably have no problem with you.
And therein lies the problem. You see, for the most part, gay people have one the equality battle. But that’s not good enough for the drama queens who just want to be outraged, so they have to keep pushing the boundaries of acceptable public behavior and demanding that everyone else be okay with it…. or there will be further outrage. It will never stop. Nothing will ever be good enough because liberal’s identities are completely tied up in being outraged.
As a gay man, I find it pretty fucked up that, in some areas of the country, we’re teaching children to question their gender and sexual orientation at ages 9 and 10. I also don’t think it’s appropriate to have drag queens come to school and read stories to 7 year olds.
If I were a parent, that would be a red line.
Andy by the way, there is no man-made climate change. The cycles of the SUN and the earths rotational patterns over centuries control the climate. Period. It might surprise you to know that this particular scare tactic has been going on sine the 1930’s – and yet, we’re all still here. It’s been 30 years since Al Gore and nothing. People have short memories and no nothing about history. Look up the agenda of the “Club of Rome” from the early 1970’s. This climate scare is just another way of convincing people that they are the problem and need to make huge sacrifices in both convenience and tax dollars to save the planet. Bullshit. The people making the policies are the problem. Get rid of them and “Climate Change” disappears with them.