The students of the University of Wyoming deserved better. Their commencement speaker was an awful Republican who said stupid things.
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) was resoundingly booed on Saturday while giving a commencement address at the University of Wyoming after she said it is a “fundamental scientific truth” that there can only be males and females.
“There are those in government who believe not that the creator endowed us with inalienable rights … but that government created those rights,” Lummis said in her speech. “And the government should redefine those rights, including our rights to freedom of speech, religion, property, assembly and to keep and bear arms. Even fundamental scientific truths — such as the existence of two sexes, male and female — are subject to challenge these days.”
Students erupted in boos and jeers after that last sentence — and they continued on for nearly 30 seconds as Lummis stood awkwardly smiling onstage.
You can watch the moment here, starting right around the 49:40 mark.
Good for the students booing her. She seems to think that Jesus created “rights”, that they weren’t the product of human beings writing rules down. She thinks “two sexes” is a scientific truth, when the science she excludes and doesn’t understand says that sex is much more complicated and diverse than she imagines.
If you just listen to that short segment, though you’ll miss the other lunacies in her speech. A minute or two before that, she was plugging Bitcoin. After her “two sexes” bit, she talks about her favorite contemporary non-fiction author
, who is…Eric Metaxas? Well, there’s the problem right there. She thinks a conservative evangelical pundit who writes children’s books supporting Donald Trump, with titles like Donald Builds the Wall and Donald Drains the Swamp, who writes bad biographies praising Christian leaders, whose writing is full of nothing but god-talk, who is an anti-vaxxer, is an example of a non-fiction author.
Lummis is a deluded, ignorant fool. Wyoming is a conservative state, so I can understand how she got elected, but I used to expect a university to promote just the best and brightest, and the University of Wyoming failed on that point.
Also, as of February of this year, Lummis owns about $200,000 worth of Bitcoin. I don’t know what that’s worth now (I hope much less), but using a commencement speech to shill for your personal profit is kind of gross.
Of course, Lummis and other fascists will use this incident as a data point in their case that higher education is a Stalinist indoctrination mill, churning out “anti-american,” “anti-god,” “communist” graduates who hate “freedom” (i.e. guns, capitalism, and the license to call black people the n-word) save for “sexual deviancy.”
I’m not saying they shouldn’t have booed her. I’m just point out what’s to come.
Don’t forget noted sucker-puncher.
LOL.
Who thought making this person a commencement speaker was a GOOD idea?
The only time I had the displeasure of listening to a fundamentalist preacher speak was at the commencement for my high school. He rambled aimlessly for 2 hours about David “lying with” Bathsheba, and how he took a jet plane from Israel (excuse me, “the holy land”) back to America, and it was really fast. He also liked the phrase “jewel shape yourself.” People tell me that such disjointed rambling is typical. You would think that for a special occasion, with a large audience, speakers would make an effort, especially if they have a Congressional staff to support them, i.e. keep them from looking like a fool in public.
I am reminded of the musical “Singing In the Rain” where the man from the publicity dept. says its job is keeping the studio’s stars from making fools of themselves “at all costs.” The punch line was “nobody has that much moneh.”
So did it end with a stoning of all the “abominations” in the audience? I mean, I guess there are ways to establish binary sex by fiat.
Was she hawking any nutritional supplements?
I guess it’s not unreasonable for administrators (even in this state) to assume that people of her age implicitly understand that a commencement ceremony is not the place to make political statements. On the other hand, given that she was in the House of Representatives for so long, maybe they should have known better. I first heard about this yesterday, when one of my more connected FaceBook friends posted the university’s apology email that was sent out to everyone. I did not know that she was booed. Good. Every politician should be put in their place once in a while. Too bad it won’t change anything.
This Republican senator has lost tens of thousands of dollars on her bitcoin investments this year (dated today):
The informed guessing is c.35% loss in alleged-value.
They apologised to a waffle, excuse me, issued a waffling notpology, G[Q]P Sen Cynthia Lummis Issues ‘Apology’ After Transphobic Comments:
The politicians in Britain are so disconnected some of them do not even understand they are corrupt.
https://youtu.be/UzBkAt8Ao1I
or try
https://youtu.be/UzBkAt8Ao1l
In contrast listen to Abby Wambach’s commencement at Loyola Marymount. It rocks
It’s the republican way.
The entire speech is detestable but the booing should’ve started at the mention of the 2nd Amendment. Last weekend, along with every day really, is proof of how destructive that Amendment has been to American society.