What’s special about kids? Unique? They’re prosocial. You see, when we’re born, we’re different, in profound ways, than from when we’re adults. We’re born prosocial. Empathy flows out of us. We brim over with curiosity. We seek to bond with all kinds, human, animal alike, and make no social distinctions. Those come later — we have to be taught all that. Umair Hague
I hate bullies, and Ron DeSantis is getting on my last nerve. CNN reported that on Monday, the Florida governor appointed Ron Peri. This right-wing Christian nationalist has plagued Orlando and Kissimmee for many years with anti-gay rhetoric—his appointment to the Reedy Creek Improvement District was not shocking. Disappointing if you are a civilized person. The RCID gives Disney World “unique powers” that no other governing body in the state receives. It was the lure that brought Disney to central Florida fifty years ago.
“So why are there homosexuals today? There are any number of reasons, you know, that are given. Some would say the increase in estrogen in our societies. You know, there’s estrogen in the water from birth control pills. They can’t get it out,” Peri baselessly said in a January 2022 Zoom discussion, later put on YouTube. “The level of testosterone in men broadly in America has declined by 50 points in the past 10 years. You know, and so, maybe that’s a part of it.”
“But the big part I would suggest to you, based upon what it’s saying here, is the removal of constraint,” he continued. “So our society provided the constraint. And so, which is the responsibility of a society to constrain people from doing evil? Well, you remove the constraints, and then evil occurs.”
Of course, no one knows what is causing testosterone levels to decline and sex changes in animals of which we are one. Since many animals are also being affected, it is suggested that the increasing heat from global warming is the culprit.
He is an unrepentant bigot and recklessly throws red-meat references about the holocaust to his rabid followers.
In one discussion, he linked homosexuality to the fall of the Roman Empire – a fringe historical belief occasionally pushed by some Christian activists.
“Homosexuality was praised,” Peri said. “LGBTQ today is being emphasized everywhere, even on children’s shows. And so ultimately the Romans had become weak.”
Peri’s discussions, which focused on seeing the modern world through a Biblical viewpoint, often touched on social topics. In other discussions uploaded on YouTube, Peri said that “not very long ago being a mother was the pinnacle of being a woman,” and he compared abortion to genocides like the Holocaust.
“It has boggled my mind that you have not seen a massive backlash from the Black population for what is effectively a genocide. And if you look to the right, you can see that in world history, there have been great killers. The Holocaust, 11 million were killed. Six million Jews,” said Peri, pointing to a chart comparing abortion to genocide.
CNN reported that DeSantis appoined to the same board, “Martin Garcia, a Tampa lawyer whose private investment firm contributed $50,000 to the governor’s 2022 reelection campaign, and Bridget Ziegler, a co-founder of the conservative organization Moms for Liberty and the wife of Christian Ziegler, the new chairman of the Republican Party of Florida.”
So why is all the hate directed at LGBT, black and immigrant populations? Umair Hague has an idea that is worth repeating here. Ron Desantis and the rest of the GQP are obsessed with our children because they aim to turn them into haters. Haters vote for Republicans, those that protest they are not filled with loathing of the others are fine with it. Hague posits that hate is a social Construction — And the Future Is, Too.
His article is in Medium and is worth a read.
That’s hard to dispute, even for lunatics. And so the American right has done something remarkable. It’s made itself the real victim. Who’s really hurt, these days? Why, it’s the right wing. Because when we teach kids slavery existed, we’re hurting their feelings. Hurting their feelings! LOL. When we teach kids that gay people exist, we’re hurting the right wing’s feelings. If we say that everyone should be able to read books, that, too hurts the feelings of the right wing.
This argument, stance, perspective, is something new. It deserves a name, so let’s call it something like “The Victimhood Argument for Authoritarianism.” It goes like this. Whenever you exercise your democratic rights, you are hurting someone. Me! You’re hurting my sensibilities! Hey, you, you guys, in that gay relationship? You two, in that lesbian marriage? You’re hurting my feelings!! Hey, teacher — leave those kids alone, when you teach that slavery really happened, and it was wrong, it makes me feel ashamed, and that hurts!! I’m the real victim here!!
Umair does not mince words about issues. He cares passionately about climate and social justice. His reflection on having brown skin and being accepted by gay men is particularly poignant for those of us that are LGBT; at least for me, it was.
And then, for me, something changed. I moved, to a place where I was hated. As a minority, a subhuman, which is to say, a thing without dignity or meaning. And that affected me deeply. I sank into a depression, and I was suicidal by the time I was maybe 12. I’d lasted as long as I could being hated — and I mean really hated, bullied, attacked, beaten, scorned. And what drove me to the edge wasn’t all that. It was that I didn’t understand: why did they hate me?
It took me a while to really grasp that. As you know, I escaped to gay clubs when I was just 13 or so… and even though I wasn’t gay, the gay community protected me fiercely. They knew I was wounded, hated, hunted like they were. I’d sit on the barstool, sipping my watered down rum and coke, and the bartender would watch over me like a big brother. I wouldn’t have made it if it hadn’t been for them.
And that community? This was the height of the AIDS crisis. They were dying. I watched it. Saw how it affected them, the tidal wave of grief that rippled through them. And yet they didn’t hate. They protected someone like me — a stranger, someone different from them— even more fiercely than before. It hit me like a thunderbolt, this epiphany. Finally, I understood something I never had before: hate was learned thing. A social construction. It didn’t have any innate or inherent basis at all. Don’t cry for me. I’m trying to show you something, just as I learned it.
He mentions generational trauma and how hate and self-loathing make adults vulnerable to politicians like DeSantis. If we are damaged enough, we follow authoritarians. These politicians that take advantage of children to build an army with zero compassion and empathy must be defeated at every opportunity.
In a recent diary, I saw a comment mocking disco music.
It brought back bad memories from my teenage years; I was scared because I liked the music and lived during the 1970s. Violence and threats against minorities were rampant then; I wasn’t looking forward to my skull being pounded because of my choice in music.
Disco was black and Latino music that was popularized by gay disk jockeys. Vice summed up nicely what the recordings threatened was inside the minds of white males in the seventies. The smashing of disco recordings in the 1970s was all about the hatred of women, blacks, and gays. The genre ushered in one of the most racist and sexist events in pop music, sparked by the backlash film Saturday Night Fever.
History of disco demolition! This shameful episode isn’t taught in Florida schools; way too woke for that to happen.
I don’t know about you, but I am tired of hearing about the haters' victimhood and hurt fee fees.
