Confirmed. Fuck.

Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos arrives before testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2017, at her confirmation hearing. CREDIT: AP/Carolyn Kaster.

Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos arrives before testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2017, at her confirmation hearing. CREDIT: AP/Carolyn Kaster.

Think Progress has the story. All the bad news is at Pharyngula, where I first saw this, and experienced that caved-in, sinking chest feeling, in spite of being heavily medicated.* All I can say right now is go read. Read, and renew your conviction and commitment to fight back. We are in situation dire as fuck.

*Dealing with extreme stress right now, PTSD shit. Likely to be on the erratic side for a bit, can’t focus right now. There will also probably be mass amounts of typos, please be kind in your corrections.

National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

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Get Educated. Get Tested. Get Involved. Get Treated.

The day was originally established in 1999 to call attention to the impact of HIV and AIDS in the black/African-American community, and 18 years later, it is a vital reminder that in Los Angeles County — and indeed across the country — the impact of HIV continues to be devastating. According to the 2017-2021 Comprehensive HIV Plan for Los Angeles County, for example, the HIV epidemic among the black/African-American community in our own backyard encompasses the following statistics:

  • Blacks/African-Americans are one of three racial/ethnic groups most impacted by HIV
  • Among men who have sex with men (MSM) blacks/African-Americans have the highest estimated HIV prevalence
  • Young (18-29) black/African American MSM are one of the fastest-rising groups contracting HIV
  • New HIV diagnoses  both adults/adolescent males and females is highest among blacks/African-Americans
  • Among females living with HIV, the majority are black/African-American

For a sobering perspective on the epidemic nationally, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year reported that if current trends continue, one in two black/African-American MSM will contract HIV in their lifetime. Fifty percent. Even PrEP, the daily use of a pill that prevents HIV, approved four years ago, is not yet making major inroads in communities of color, due to lack of awareness, problems with access, and concerns about its cost as well as distrust of the medical establishment (the shameful legacy of Tuskegee still looms large).

[…]

Get Educated
Everyone in our community has a responsibility to learn the facts about HIV as well as other sexually transmitted infections and talk with our friends, family, and sexual partners. This will go such a long way in ensuring that we are all informed. Additionally, it is important that we all know the truth about the ways to prevent HIV transmission (condoms, PrEP/PEP, HIV-positive individuals being in care and on medication). It is also important we support those who are HIV-positive. This reduces the stigma associated with living with HIV, which often prevents those who are HIV-positive from seeking the medical care they need or from talking to their loved ones.

In addition, if you have health insurance, talk to a medical provider about PrEP and other HIV prevention methods. If you don’t have insurance, find out if you qualify for a low-cost plan. In California, for example, Medi-Cal enrollment continues year-round, and PrEP is one of the benefits an enrollee can access for little or no cost. The Trump administration can’t take that away yet.

Get Tested
If you’re sexually active, get tested for HIV and STIs every three to six months. It’s easy to do, free even if you don’t have insurance, and confidential. Encourage your friends and partners to get tested and share their results too.

Get Involved
There are many wonderful HIV and health care organizations in our community that are committed to ending the epidemic. They need your support, whether through volunteering or financially. Reach out to them to see how you can help. In addition, lend your voice to the fight to keep Obamacare accessible for everyone. Access is a crucial component to fighting HIV and getting people in care.

Get Treated
If you are HIV-positive and not getting medical care, find out where you can get it. If you are in care, take your medication as prescribed. We know that when HIV-positive individuals are virally suppressed the likelihood of them transmitting HIV is almost zero.

We should never forget that we can help each other with each of these steps — that we are stronger working together. The future isn’t looking so bright out there at the moment, let’s be honest. But we can ensure we are doing everything possible with the resources above to stay healthy in body and mind. We can, and will, thrive despite those who would seek to strip care away from us.

Via The Advocate. * National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

“Obama Would Never Do That.”

Donald Trump, by Jason Mecier.

Donald Trump, by Jason Mecier.

“Obama would never do that.” Turns out that sentence is the magical key to manipulating Trump into doing whatever someone wants. Honestly, when it comes to manipulating the president of a country, I’d like it to be more difficult than that. That’s the sort of manipulation used on a wayward two year old.

The one way a White House staffer can get President Donald Trump to do what they want is by telling him that President Barack Obama would never have done it, a new report reveals.

According to the Independent, an anonymous staffer leaked that the way military leaders were able to urge Trump to act on the failed Yemen raid was by telling him Obama didn’t want to do it.

General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, were reportedly able to persuade Trump to move forward by claiming Obama would never have been so bold to actually go through with it.

Full story here.

Multi-Million Dollar Deals.

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In a lawsuit filed today, First Lady Melania Trump revealed her intention to leverage the presidency to ink new “licensing, branding, and endorsement” deals worth many millions of dollars. In the filing, Melania Trump’s lawyer described the position of First Lady as a “once-in-a-lifetime” money making opportunity. She told the court she intended to pursue deals in “apparel, accessories, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, hair care, skin care, and fragrance.”

These kind of endorsement deals would be especially lucrative while Melania Trump is First Lady and thus “one of the most photographed women in the world.”

So many Trumpoids just wouldn’t shut up about how nice it would be to have a “classy” (read: white) first lady. Yes, that’s class alright, nothing but a laser focus on how much the wallet could be fattened, and how often her face would be plastered all over. Used to be, that sort of behaviour would have been termed crass.

According to the lawsuit, because of the Daily Mail’s inaccurate reporting, these business opportunities will be less available to her while her husband is in the White House.

The strategy Melania Trump lays out in her lawsuit is similar to the one already being executed by President Trump.

Most people already know how Trump has refused to divest, how he has openly violated the constitution, and how he’s leveraging his position to make more money, but if you don’t, head over to Think Progress.

Puree With A Taste Of Triangles.

ALENA ZHANDAROVA.

ALENA ZHANDAROVA.

Alena Zhandarova’s works immediately caught my eye and imagination. Truly wonderful.

Exploring the uniqueness and diversity in each of her subjects, Russian photographer Alena Zhandarova continually pushes the borders of her perception by trying something new.

“I am fascinated by the opportunity to try myself as a storyteller with my own protagonists,” she says. Using the chance to transform her feelings and experience into distinctive visual language, Zhandarova breaks the found context and finds her own way to communicate with the found space. The series of portraits called ‘Puree With A Taste Of Triangles‘ is as bizarre as its name, breaking the convention of traditional portrait photography. The girls in Zhandarova’s images usually have their faces covered, blending with numerous patterns and colors and thus becoming a part of the background themselves. The photographer explains: “I am inspired by the idea of combining incompatible, creating something out of nothing, finding an amazing coincidence, which then develops into a unique story.”

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There is so very much to see in each photograph, the delight is in the details as well as the overall photo. They can also be interpreted in many different ways. I am in love with her work, and I love the way she thinks. Ms. Zhandarova is featured at iGNANT, and her website is here. Go and delight yourself!

One Massive Trichobezoar.

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Via Atlas Obscura.

People with cats, rejoice they aren’t cows. Pictured above is a massive hairball, from a cow.

Situated at the entrance to the equally enjoyable Lee Richardson Zoo, the Finney County Historical Museum is a quaint museum that tells the history of Southwestern Kansas. It also tastefully displays the World’s Largest Hairball atop a brass spittoon.

Removed from the stomach of a cow that was processed in a nearby packing house, this mammoth trichobezoar was nearly 40 inches in circumference and was said to have weighed 55 pounds wet when first removed. Though smaller and drier now, it’s still a very impressive sight. Visitors are free to lightly touch the ball (it feels like a velvet basketball) but signage politely reminds them not to pick it up.

Via Atlas Obscura. All I can say is that cow must have been a mad groomer.

The Resistance and The Democratic Party.

Senate Democrats must make up their minds about how to handle President Trump. CREDIT: AP Photo/Alex Brandon.

Senate Democrats must make up their minds about how to handle President Trump. CREDIT: AP Photo/Alex Brandon.

The Democrats won’t be leading the resistance, they are reluctantly following it, and it’s past time to commit. There’s an excellent, in-depth article at Think Progress about what the Dems are doing, and what they aren’t doing. Highly recommended reading.

…With protesters flooding airports in the cities that have actually been victims of terrorist attacks, American voters got their first glimpse of how Democrats might dig in against the new administration’s attempts to abandon longstanding U.S. values. Elected officials didn’t just offer moral support; they showed up in person and lent the power of their office to a concrete effort at combating injustice.

But even then, Democrats were not leading a resistance. They were racing to catch up with the people who moderate strategists and elected officials within the party’s fraying Congressional minority have been ignoring for years.

A gap has opened up between federal officeholders with a “D” next to their names and the wide majority of Americans who do not like President Trump. Staunch Senate resistance to Trump’s ill-suited and ethically challenged cabinet nominees last week suggests some in Washington are beginning to wise up. But the week also offered more evidence that Democrats believe voters will reward them for cooperating with Trump where possible — a misguided notion that would leave the party standing apart from protesters and resistance groups, and create a political vacuum strong enough to swallow the party for good.

For all the party’s faults, and all the harm its corporatism has done to left-of-center political ideas and public policies, further breakdown in Democratic cohesion and backbone would leave Americans without any meaningful opposition to Trump’s backward ideas — and no hope of rescuing the world’s largest free society from self-inflicted oblivion.

People who seek political office tend to view themselves as leaders. But Democrats find themselves instead following a wave of energy they cannot claim to have originated. While it may sting the ego to be behind the leading edge of anti-Trump resistance, the party and its individual members have a perfect opportunity to position themselves as joiners, helpers, and colleagues of a budding populist movement.

Both the Democratic Party and the country are better served by these leaders becoming a part of that movement rather than by attempting to manage it — or appearing to betray it in the name of Beltway compromise.

I can’t emphasise the truth of the above enough. The notion of playing along or picking your battles is one which alienates all those who see the rapidly widening cracks under our feet. It’s often a snort of disgust to be heard after a democrat decides to compromise, like affirming Ben Carson, the idiot’s idiot, to be in charge of housing. There isn’t time for democrats to make up their mind here, while shuffling their feet and having debates over the merit of this, that, or the over. It’s time for quick thinking and action. It’s troubling, to say the least, that those traits aren’t common ones in those who make up political parties.

…The initial stirrings of a real resistance movement in Washington run contrary to an old party conviction — one that guided Democrats into their early capitulations, and which still lurks behind wishy washy statements on Trump’s Supreme Court nominee and in closed-door meetings about “Triangulating Trump” on infrastructure and trade.

Leaders think that Republicans will operate in good faith so long as Dems do likewise. If they show how reasonable they can be, the moderate thinking goes, Schumer’s gang can pick off some Republican votes on the truly odious nominees.

But while this kind of horsetrading might have made some sense with Obama in the White House, it is flat-out nuts to accord Trump’s party the same faith.

Trump’s approval ratings are already down from the record lows that greeted his inauguration. Millions are already in the streets marching against him. He is bringing sycophants to the CIA to clap for him in front of the press. He’s telling Congressional leadership that voter fraud is real because a golfer told him a story once. His political brand is emboldening the men’s-rights crowd and the modern white supremacist movement, two allies sure to further taint his reputation.

It is hard to craft “be reasonable” into an effective political brand even in more stable times. Obama-era Democrats should have learned that lesson in 2010 and 2014 as Republicans were rewarded for years of hardline obstruction.

Another truth. For the whole of the Obama administration, rethugs pulled every filthy trick in the book, even to the point of shutting the government down in a massive tantrum, to get what they want, and no one in the democratic party seems to learn from that behaviour – they continue to behave as though being submissive and conciliatory will work, when it’s been shown time and time again that it won’t. When you’re up against an immoral force, caving is never an effective strategy.

 The few voters who pay obsessive attention to political news may notice Democrats’ commitment to being the adult in the room and reward it. But most Americans won’t see or hear about or understand the intricate machinery of Democratic grownup-ism. They will instead see flashes of Democrats collaborating with Trump, blurring the brand distinction between a Democratic vision for the future and Trump’s bug-eyed retreat into fear and vengeance.

Digging in to fight every battle, on the other hand, would ensure that even casual viewers hear Democrats blasting a constant bullhorn of objection, defiance, and “no.” Becoming the party of no in opposition to Trump would put Democrats on the moral high-ground. The approach urged by party moderates, though, actively privileges a different, stodgier set of values over those of justice, equality, tolerance, and broad economic opportunity.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. And yes.

Senate collegiality is a value. Continuity of administrative competence in Washington agencies that directly touch Americans’ lives every day is a value. Deference to the 46 percent of 2016 voters who put a madman in the White House is a value, too. But they are not ideas that can rekindle a party.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. And yes.

The absolutist rejection of Trump policies on Capitol Hill is a prerequisite for Democrats’ resistance efforts. But it is not, on its own, a resistance movement.

Movements happen in streets, living rooms, diners, bars, and churches. They operate from communities upward. Their structure is bottom-up rather than top-down, which can leave would-be leaders of a Trump resistance who hold federal office on unsure footing. If they attempt to stake out leadership positions on behalf of airport protesters and women’s marchers and defiant federal bureaucrats, will they appear to be big-footing organic populism that’s driving them left?

But it is not complicated to hedge against this risk. Democrats simply have to go to the people directly.

[…]

If there are in fact any Trump moderates, they are severely outnumbered within his movement by dyed-in-the-wool anti-liberals genuinely eager to ban Muslims, wall off Mexico, and lock up every black woman who cusses at a cop. Democrats can speak to the gettable independent voter and say “no” to all things Trump at the same damn time — and there is simply nothing they could ever say that would split loyalists from their glib, TV-savvy president.

So instead of trying to out-argue the ogre in the White House, Democrats must bypass him and the national media figures that jump at his every little mendacity like a crow leaps at a shiny pebble. They must communicate directly with the people. And in doing so, they must surrender their sense of being entitled to call themselves leaders — and embrace instead the power of following.

Many more yeses. Think Progress has the full article, highly recommended.

The Forgotten and Missing Songs.

A photo of the lost spool. Photo: University of Akron.

A photo of the lost spool. Photo: University of Akron.

A long-lost wire spool — containing recordings of German songs that Jewish prisoners in Nazi concentration camps were forced to sing, and Yiddish songs they sang in rebellion – was recently located by accident in the University of Akron archive where it had been mislabeled, the UK’s Daily Mail reported on Friday.

According to the report, the retrieved spool was one of a set of 200 recordings of interviews conducted right after World War II with displaced Holocaust survivors in Germany, Italy, France, and Switzerland. The interviews, with at least 130 Jews, were conducted by Dr. David Boder in 1946 for the purpose of preserving the history of the “unspeakable horrors” they had endured at the hands of the Nazis. During Boder’s talks with the survivors, some recounted and sang the songs in question.

According to the Daily Mail, all the oral histories that Boder recorded were transferred in 1967 to the Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology at the University of Akron in Ohio.

Because Boder had mentioned the songs, recorded at a refugee camp in Henonville, France, in his subsequent writings, researchers were puzzled as to why they did not feature on any of the spools. The mystery was solved when media digitizer Jon Endres sifted through the three boxes in the Cummings Center archive that contained the recordings and came upon a spool that had mistakenly been entered into the system with a typo. Rather than being filed as the “Henonville Songs,” it was labeled as the “Heroville Songs.”

After digitizing the recording, Endres wrote in a blog post, he was “blown away.”

Dr. David Baker, the Margaret Clark Moran Executive Director of the Cummings Center, said of the find: “I think it is one of the most important discoveries from our collections in our 50-year history. That we could give the world the melody to a song sung by those sentenced to their death through forced labor during one of the most unspeakable horrors of the 20th century is remarkable.”

One example of such a song is “Undzer shtetl brent” (Our Village is Burning) by Mordecai Gebirtig, performed by Gita Frank, who explains in the introduction that it was once sung by the composer’s daughter in the cellars of a Krakow ghetto. Intended to inspire Jews to rebel against the Germans, the original words were changed to “The Jewish People Are Burning.”

You can read more here, here, and here. The last link has full sound clouds. So much sorrow here, and we find ourselves surrounded by those who think such horror is just fine.

A Fitting Trump Logo and Two Border Walls.

tucker-viemeister-nazi-trump-logo-design-graphics-hero

© Tucker Viemeister.

American industrial designer Tucker Viemeister has designed a logo for Donald Trump based on Nazi insignia to reflect the billionaire’s “racist hate mongering”.

The logo, featuring a tilting letter T inside a white circle on a red background, resembles the swastika symbol used by the Nazis.

Viemeister created the logo in April last year, before Trump became the Republican party’s official presidential nominee, posting it on Twitter along with the words “I hope they [Trump’s supporters] don’t like it!”

He also published the design on his website with a short statement that says: “Design can show what bad things have in common, like this logo I created for Trump’s campaign of bigotry and violence.”

Following Trump’s inauguration as president and his introduction last weekend of the controversial executive order banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries entry to the United States, Viemeister said the logo had new and sinister relevance.

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“Obviously the logo is a spin on the Nazi insignia because there is a correlation between Trump’s racist hate mongering and the Nazis,” he told Dezeen.

“I’m worried that his followers will adapt it for the very opposite reasons I made it,” he continued. “They might like that connection with those white power fascists.”

“I wish I could make something that would help those followers become more inclusive and tolerant so that we can all work together to solve the issues that we all confront.”

Via Dezeen. Tucker Viemeister’s site. Moving on to the fabulous IKEA border wall! Simple! Inexpensive! Can be put together with one hex key! Only two people required!

WallUS

Washington (dpo) – “Too expensive!” “Too complicated!” “Unrealistic!” – This is the sort of criticism US President Donald Trump is currently facing over plans to build a wall along the border with Mexico. An offer from home furnishings brand, IKEA, could solve all of these problems with a single blow.

The Scandinavian furniture maker has offered the USA a practical, ready-made solution with “Börder Wåll”. All they need to do is pick it up in a van from the nearest IKEA branch and put it up where they want it to go. Totalling US $9,999,999,999.99, “Börder Wåll” is significantly cheaper than a conventional wall. Estimates suggest that a conventional wall would cost between US $15 and $25 billion.

According to government press secretary, Sean Spicer, President Trump is currently inspecting the offer:

TrumpKatalog

The simple, Scandinavian designed border wall (with a 5 year guarantee) is primarily made of pressboard with a birch effect and can be assembled with the help of a hex key. A 12,000 page instruction manual with easy-to-understand pictures makes construction child’s play – as long as there is not a single screw missing.
“However, assembly requires two people: one person can hold the wall while the second screws it together”, it states in IKEA’s offer.
The basic model of the wall is 33ft (10 m) tall and 1,954 miles (3,144 km) long, although the height and length can be extended as desired.
IKEA has already announced that it will design other products in the next few weeks that will be compatible with “Börder Wåll”. According to inside sources, this includes products such as the “Gåwk” watchtower and the “Råtåtåtåtåtå” spring-gun.

Via Postillon. German version here. (No, this is not for real. There’s no Ikea border wall, okay?)

Then there’s the wonder of The Pink Wall:

Mexican firm Estudio 3.14 has visualised the “gorgeous perversity” of US presidential candidate Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall along the countries’ border.

In response to the controversial proposal, a group of interns at the Guadalajara-based studio came up with a conceptual design that would celebrate Mexico’s architectural heritage.

 

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The giant solid barrier would run 1,954 miles (3,145 kilometres) uninterrupted from the Pacific coast to the Gulf of Mexico, and be painted bright pink in the spirit of the 20th-century buildings by Pritzker Prize-winning Mexican architect Luis Barragán.

“Because the wall has to be beautiful, it has been inspired in by Luis Barragán’s pink walls that are emblematic of Mexico,” said the studio. “It also takes advantage of the tradition in architecture of megalomaniac wall building.”

Estudio 3.14‘s Prison-Wall project – developed in collaboration with the Mamertine Corporation of the United States – was undertaken to “allow the public to imagine the policy proposal in all of its gorgeous perversity”.

Visuals show the barrier traversing hills, desert, a river, and the border city Tijuana. The structure would also incorporate a prison to detain those attempting to cross into the US.

“Moreover, the wall is not only a wall,” said Estudio 3.14. “It is a prison where 11 million undocumented people will be processed, classified, indoctrinated, and/or deported.”

The team suggests that the wall could employ up to six million personnel. It could also incorporate shopping centre straddling its width, and a viewpoint from which US citizens could climb up and look down onto the other side.

A series of graphics to accompany the proposal range from posters calling for workers, to US currency emblazoned with the wall’s pink trail.

Via Dezeen. Estudio 3.14.

Paid Protesters and Offenses Against ‘God’.

AP Photo.

AP Photo.

Louie Gohmert, not exactly known for any sort of rational viewpoint, has now picked up the banner of “Paid Protesters!” and running with it. For the most part, there isn’t anywhere Gohmert is taken seriously, except for Breitbart. Yes, Fascist Daily has embraced the daft Gohmert.

That congressman is Louie Gohmert of Texas, who is well known for his crazy talk, such as his statement that gay men make ineffective soldiers because they’re getting massages from their lovers all day. But Breitbart and its ilk treat him as a serious person.

“This is fake news,” he said of the protests against Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. “This is people who are just out there to create the appearance of obstruction. You know, Patrick Poole, remember back in one of the demonstrations on the Mall, caught one of the guys: ‘Hey, how much are you getting paid?’ He said, ‘$15 an hour. I thought everybody was getting that.’ They’re getting paid. The Soros money gets spread around.

As usual, rethugs seldom care about the source of their information. No one loves bullshit quite as much as conservatives.

Poole, by the way, is a conspiracy-minded blogger who regularly rails against “radical Islam.” It’s not clear what protest on the National Mall Gohmert is referencing, but several right-wingers have asserted that Soros funded the Women’s March on Washington and paid its participants — something the fact-checking site PolitiFact rated “Pants on Fire.”

Get those facts right before you twist them to pieces, okay? As usual, Ann Coulter has been waxing glib about the Tiny Dictator, never getting a single fact right, because hey, they have alternative facts, and those are better, right?

She particularly praised Trump’s executive order banning entry to the U.S. by residents of seven majority-Muslim countries, and his ban on refugees in general. “And as I wrote in my column in Breitbart, it’s not just that we’re worried they’re going to shoot up a gay nightclub or a community center in San Bernardino, the Boston Marathon, Fort Hood, 9/11 — that isn’t the only purpose to this,” she said. “What’s the upside? We keep bringing in all of these elderly, sickly poor people. They aren’t fleeing anything except not as good or free health care in Yemen as in America. We have our own poor people. We have our own elderly.”

:Must not drink tea when reading: Not as good or free health care in America? Okaaaaaaaaaay, we’re on another planet now, right? Because on the planet known as Earth, the country known as America has never had good or free health care. People don’t completely uproot themselves and place themselves in tenuous and frightening position because American healthcare. This is jaw-dropping willful delusion.

Well, so much for “Give me your tired, your poor,” plus Coulter doesn’t generally express much concern about impoverished American citizens. And several studies have indicated that neither legal nor undocumented immigrants are a drain on social services. Check out The New Republic’s analysis here. And, of course, some of the attacks she cited were committed by people born in the U.S. (Surprisingly, she did not mention the Bowling Green Massacre.) But misleading rhetoric like Coulter’s is exactly what builds support for Trump’s xenophobic policies.

The republican insistence on any and all terrorism being “outside” once again emphasises their view on domestic terrorism: oh, that? No, no such thing. America has a huge problem with homegrown terrorism, and the denial continues, and we will pay for that, because all those homegrown terrorists think they are home free in the Fascist States of America now. They aren’t far wrong, either.

We’ve been reporting a lot on the past week on potential Trump executive orders affecting LGBT people. First there were rumors that he would undo President Obama’s executive order prohibiting companies with federal contracts from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. He then announced he would not, a decision that was reportedly influenced by daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner — although they are hardly real allies of LGBT people.

Some on the far right were not pleased with Trump’s decision. Among them was Alan Keyes, who worked in the Reagan administration and has sought the presidency, both as a Republican and as a member of minor parties.

Oh goody, yet another World Nut Daily talking head. This is sure to be predictable: Queer Bad! Transgender Terrifying!

“The existential perpetuation of humanity depends upon procreation,” Keyes wrote. “The relations between man and woman, with a view to human procreation, toward which they are naturally impelled, therefore involve unalienable right.” LGBT people, according to Keyes, are “impelled by their own will and preference toward lifestyles that have no special regard for the common good.” And they “deny and disparage the God-endowed natural right of procreation,” he added.

People have the right to eschew procreation altogether, y’know. Some people want sprogs, some people don’t. The key here being people. Their particular orientation doesn’t matter. All manner of hetero people can’t have sprogs, but still want them. Do they get booted onto the icky queer pile?

Keyes may be more pleased about another LGBT-related executive order, a draft of which was obtained and published by The Nation last week. It would provide companies, nonprofits, and even government employees a broad license to discriminate, without repercussions, against LGBT people and anyone else who offends a certain set of religious beliefs. The protected beliefs are that only heterosexual marriages are legitimate, that sexual relations are reserved for such marriages, that life begins at conception, and that gender is fixed at birth. White House spokesman Sean Spicer has refused to confirm or deny that the order is under consideration. We haven’t seen the far-right media weighing in on it yet, but activist groups such as the National Organization for Marriage are pushing it.

Another thing that didn’t please the far right last week was the Boy Scouts of America’s decision to admit transgender boys. “The BSA folded on God and how he ‘made them male and female,’” wrote Brent Bozell in a column on Townhall. “In today’s culture, the secular left lets man overrule God. This cowardly shell of an organization should just scrap the references to God, and every God-respecting church should jettison their Boy Scout units to the nearest secular gathering place.” He of course ignores the fact that an increasing number of churches accept and affirm transgender people — and these congregations most likely respect God.

That would be one particular god. That particular god is rejected by a whole lot of people. It has no place in my head or life. I am, as ever, amused by the whole “made them male and female” crap. Yeah, yeah, and supposedly, they were made in Jehovah’s image, too. Christians never ever think that through.

The Advocate has the full run down on fascism today.