Sorry gay people! You don’t get to go to crappy cartoon paradise!

This video produced by Jehovah’s Witnesses has been making the rounds in my feeds, and I finally watched it this morning. Pink News has a partial transcript, but the gist of it is a little girl gets coached by her mom to tell her friend that God does not approve of her same-sex parents’ lifestyle, nosiree, not one bit, and he will not let them play in his sandbox if they don’t straighten up. (Geddit? Straighten up? Hahaha I crack myself up.)

There is much to mock here of course, but also much to fear. This is indoctrination into bullying for the elementary school set which, if the roles and messaging were reversed, would have the religious right screaming about persecution. (And for once they might actually have a point.) No child deserves to be told that her parents are going to burn in a lake of fire forever for the unspeakable crime of loving each other and raising a family together. And in a nod to widely-discredited and dangerous “conversion therapy,” mom tells the kid, “People can change. That’s why we share his message.”

STFU 4EVER KTHX.

The most heartbreaking part of it is that the little girl has it exactly right when she tells her mom, “Carrie drew two mommies. She told me they’re married to each other. My teacher says that all that matters is that people love each other and that they’re happy.”

But mom’s not having any of that. And neither is the ultimate bully, Jehovah. Mom says:

“People have their own ideas about what is right and wrong – but what matters is how Jehovah feels. He wants us to be happy and he knows how we can be happiest. That’s why he invented marriage the way he did.”

“I’LL TELL YOU WHEN YOU’RE FUCKING HAPPY, RAWR!!!” -God.

Christ, what a shitshow. Anyway, let’s just focus for a minute on this paradise we’re all supposed to want to get into. With a truly bizarre metaphor, mom compares entering heaven to…getting on an airplane. If you’ve ever flown coach on American, I’m sure you’ll grok the irony here. Worse: in this scenario a gay partner is forbidden cargo, and Jehovah is the TSA? Or something?

MOM: It’s kind of like going on an airplane – what would happen if someone wanted to bring something on the plane that wasn’t allowed?

KID: They can’t go on the trip!

MOM: Right! It’s the same with Jehovah! He wants us to be his friend, and live in paradise forever, but we have to follow his standards to get there…To get there we have to leave some things behind – that means anything Jehovah doesn’t approve of.

The cartoon d00d looks at his (super gay!) bag, twice, before unceremoniously ditching it and dashing through the heavenly purple metal detector.

heavenlytsa

Leave your gay “baggage” behind—and enter hay fever paradise.

I wouldn’t want to share an elevator ride with these insufferable assholes, much less eternity.

__________

Just your regular reminder (on the remote chance there’s no Wifi in the afterlife): if you’re looking for me, I’ll see you in hell. 2nd circle, VIP section.

I approve this mockery.

IMAGE: Sunset at Waterrock Knob © Robert Ludlow, North Carolina photographer (Used with permission. All rights reserved.)IMAGE: Sunset at Waterrock Knob
© Robert Ludlow, North Carolina photographer
(Used with permission. All rights reserved.)

As readers here know, the stunningly beautiful state of North Carolina recently enacted an egregious law that voids and prohibits any and all anti-discrimination statutes enacted by local municipalities to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, among others. The law also prohibits local anti-discrimination statutes and/or state law remedies for discrimination based on race, sex, national origin, ethnicity and religion. And since this was not nearly enough doucheweaselry to pack into a single bill introduced in an “emergency session” and passed into law 11 hours and 10 minutes later, it went even further: with respect to public-sector contractors, HB2 also prohibits local municipalities from enacting laws concerning minimum wages, health insurance standards, family leave policies, child welfare protections and the number of consecutive hours an employee is required to work without a break. I mean that is impressive people, amirite?

The most notorious provision of HB2 is the one requiring people to use restrooms corresponding to their assigned gender at birth. Putting aside (for the purposes of this particular rant) its significant implications for those of nonbinary genders, HB2 means, among other things, that these people must now use restrooms designated “WOMEN”: [Read more…]

I ♥ NY.

Following in the footsteps of some very powerful companies—including Apple, IBM, Wal-Mart, the NFL, the NBA and American Airlines—that are pressuring the state of North Carolina to repeal its evil law that forbids anti-discrimination statutes that protect LGBT people in any way, and bans trans people from using restrooms appropriate for their gender identities, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is piling on:

[Read more…]

URGENT: Signal boosting.

[CONTENT NOTE: descriptions of anti-gay violence and horrific injuries; no graphic images here, but there are at the Washington Post and Go Fund Me links.]

Via my brilliant, brave and amazing friend Niki (who has a fantastic new blog at The Orbit that you should definitely check out) comes a story so fucking sad and enraging I am having tremendous difficulty writing about it. I’m shaking while I type. Also, my screen looks very blurry—there must be a lot of dust up in here.

A month ago, [Marquez] Tolbert, 21, and his boyfriend Anthony Gooden Jr., 23, were jolted out of sleep by the feeling of boiling water splashing across their torsos, faces and limbs. Gooden’s mother’s boyfriend, Martin Blackwell, stood over them, pouring the water, they say.

For a moment, Tolbert had no idea what could have provoked the alleged attack. Then Blackwell allegedly yanked him off the mattress and yelled, “Get out of my house with all that gay,” Tolbert recalled to WSBTV.

It was not Blackwell’s apartment. He didn’t even live there.

[Read more…]