#Orlando Nightclub Massacre

[the1beardedgent]

Remember them...

[morbidology]

Eddie Justice's final messages to his mother serve as a chilling testament to the terror that unfolded within the confines of Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Huddled in the bathroom, Eddie sent frantic texts to his mother as Omar Mateen unleashed a senseless rampage in the early hours of June 12, 2016. Tragically, Eddie's desperate pleas for help were met with unimaginable violence as Mateen stormed into the bathroom and fatally shot him, adding to the staggering toll of 50 lives lost and over 50 others injured in the tragic massacre.

[tomorrowusa]

There are a number of threats to the LGBTQ+ community around the world. And with Pride Month on the horizon, federal law enforcement in the US is urging people to be more alert.

Authorities warned US citizens abroad to "exercise increased caution". "Stay alert in locations frequented by tourists, including Pride celebrations," a warning issued by the state department said. The advisory came on Friday, a week after a similar alert issued by US law enforcement agencies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said: "Foreign terrorist organizations or supporters may seek to exploit increased gatherings associated with the upcoming June 2024 Pride Month." Although no specific gatherings or locations were mentioned in the warnings, the law enforcement agencies noted that messages from the Islamic State (IS) group distributed in English in February 2023 included rhetoric against LGBTQI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and intersex) events and venues.

Being concerned about anti-LGBTQ+ violence is not paranoid even during "normal" times. Remember the Pulse massacre in 2016?

During Pride Month in June 2016, a man inspired by IS ideology shot dead 49 people and wounded 53 more at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The FBI and DHS warning also noted that three IS sympathisers had been arrested for attempting to attack a Pride parade in Vienna, Austria in 2023. The Counter Extremism Project, a New York-based non-profit group, noted that anti-LGBTQ ideas had been taken up by both Islamist and far-right extremists. "It is no surprise that neo-Nazis and jihadis often express mutual admiration for their shared anti-gay visions," Mark D Wallace, the project's chief executive, said in a statement.

The narrowly averted attack on a Pride march in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho in 2022 was a close call. A heads up by a concerned citizen prevented violence.

The 31 people arrested in Idaho have ties to a White nationalist group and planned to riot at a Pride event, police say. Here’s what we know

After an alarmed 911 caller reported a group dressed like a “little army” getting into a moving truck, police in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, arrested 31 men believed to be linked to a White nationalist group, who had plans to riot at a weekend Pride event, authorities said. The large group – which police believe was affiliated with Patriot Front – was seen at a hotel piling into a U-Haul with riot gear, the caller told a 911 dispatcher. They were later pulled over and arrested, Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White said.

When becoming aware of an immediate threat inside the United States, call 911. If you discover credible evidence of anti-LGBTQ+ violence being planned for some future time, call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324). Hate crimes are against the law. All threats of violence should be taken seriously.

If you're abroad, remain alert and pay attention to local advisories and those from embassies.

There's an axis of homophobia which includes Russia, Iran, Uganda, and the far right in the West. Islamic State and (so called) Patriot Front are essentially on the same side. It's sad, but such threats, regardless of source, cannot be ignored.

[tiffanyetaylor]

Today is the seven-year anniversary of the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Never forget 💛💚💙💜🖤💔

[error-404-fuck-not-found]

dear Americans

The Ku Klux Klan is estimated to have lynched more than 4,400 people just between the civil war and 1940. They are terrorists, and they are American.

Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL in 2016. he was born in New York. He was a terrorist, and he was American.

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols drove a truck full of explosives to a government building in Oklahoma City in 1995. The resulting explosion killed 168 people and injured 680 more. They are terrorists, and they are American. In 1921, the United States fucking government armed white supremacists and basically hired them to massacre Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We still don't have exact numbers of the dead and injured, but we know it's at least 39 dead and more than 800 injured. The perpetrators were terrorists, and they were American.

Wade Michael Page: 6 dead.

Frazier Glenn Miller: 3 dead.

Dylann Roof: 9 dead.

James Alex Fields: 1 dead.

Patrick Crusius: 23 dead.

Payton Gendron: 10 dead.

John Allen Williams: 17 dead.

All terrorists, and all Americans.

If you honestly fucking believe that sharing a country with terrorists makes you and everyone you've ever known deserving of death, and use this logic to justify the genocide of Palestinians...

Feel free to put your money where your mouth is and go first.

Even if you believe every single member of Hamas is on par with the KKK, which just factually is not true, you still have no fucking ground to stand on. Shut up.

[beardedmrbean]

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday released a withering report into the hundreds of Texas law enforcement officers’ fumbled response to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting, finding “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training.”

The long-anticipated 575-page report detailed the many failures of the May 24, 2022 response, but concluded the most significant was that officers should have immediately recognized that it was an active shooter situation and confronted the gunman, who was with victims in two adjoining classrooms.

It noted that since the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, American law enforcement officers have been trained to prioritize stopping the shooter while everything else, including officer safety, is secondary.

“These efforts must be undertaken regardless of the equipment and personnel available,” the report found.

Instead, officers wrongly treated the situation as a barricaded suspect, even as children and teachers pleaded for help with 911 operators. It took 77 minutes for officers to confront the shooter. Nineteen students and two teachers died that day and 17 others were injured in one of the country’s worst school shootings.

The federal review by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services was announced just five days after the shooting. It was led by Orange County Sheriff John Mina, the incident commander during the 2016 Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando. In that incident, officers waited three hours to take down the shooter who had barricaded himself with victims in a bathroom.

A Justice Department and National Policing Institute review of that Florida law enforcement response was far less critical than the Uvalde report. It found that Florida officers mostly followed best practices, although it stated the law enforcement agencies in Orlando should update their training and policies.

In the Uvalde review, the federal team reviewed more than 14,100 pieces of data and documentation, including policies, training logs, body camera footage, audio recordings, interview transcripts and photographs.

The team visited Uvalde nine times, spending 54 days there, and conducted more than 260 interviews with people from more than 30 organizations and agencies, including law enforcement officers, school staff, medical personnel, survivors and victims’ families.

The Uvalde report’s release comes two months after ProPublica, the Texas Tribune and PBS’ Frontline published an investigation into the response after gaining access to a trove of investigative materials, including more than 150 interviews with officers and dozens of body cameras.

The material showed that the children at Robb Elementary followed active shooter protocols, while many of the officers did not. It detailed how officers treated the situation as a barricaded suspect rather than an active threat even as evidence mounted quickly that children and teachers were injured and with the shooter.

ProPublica and the Tribune have also revealed that some officers were afraid to confront the gunman because he had a deadly AR-15 rifle. With the Washington Post, the news organizations found that the medical response also was flawed and that two children and a teacher were still alive when they were rescued more than an hour later, but then died.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to discuss the federal report at an 11 a.m. press conference.

[trans-advice]

Look we usually do memorial posts for the pulse nightclub massacre in orlando florida in 2016, but the trans genocide is so violent & vast this year that the queue is having info about trans genocide instead

[mariacallous]

All people should feel safe in their homes, schools and communities. Sadly, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and / or queer (LGBTQ+) people face higher risk of becoming victims of gun violence. Read our statement on the recent mass shooting at Club Q, in Colorado Springs.

Unfortunately, discrimination and historical lack of tracking of sexual orientation and gender identity make it impossible to understand the full loss of life due to violence against members of the LGBTQ+ community. However, as more data is being collected in recent years, some very dangerous trends are emerging.

Even with generational shifts in acceptance, LGBTQ+ students and young people are victimized by gun violence at higher rates. Here are the facts:

Mass Shootings, Violence, and Hate Crimes Involving LGBTQ+ Victims

1. The massacre at Pulse Night Club, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, was the second worst gun violence attack in American history. 49 people were murdered as they peacefully joined together in community and to dance.1 The shooter used an assault weapon with a high-capacity magazine. The victims and survivors were predominantly Latinx LGBTQ+ people.

2. LGBTQ+ people are more than twice as likely to be a victim of gun violence than their cisgender and straight peers (4.6 v 11.5 per 1,000).2

3. Additionally, nearly 20% of all hate crimes are motivated by sexual orientation and / or gender identity bias.3 Guns can make these crimes all the more deadly. In fact, nearly 8 in 10 homicides of Black trans women are by a gun.4

School Violence and LGBTQ+ Discrimination Are Connected

LGBTQ+ youth disproportionately face violence at school:

4. Notably, 29% of transgender youth have been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property, compared to 7% of cisgender youth.5

5. Markedly, 16% of gay and lesbian youth have been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property, compared to 7% of straight youth. More than 10% of bisexual youth have been threatened or injured with a weapon at school. 5

6. LGBTQ+ students face bullying at more than double the rate of others. 43% of transgender youth have been bullied on school property, compared to 18% of cisgender youth. 5

7. Bullying rates also show disparity. 29% of gay or lesbian youth have been bullied on school property, compared to 17% of straight youth. 5

Gun Violence and LGBTQ+ People

Homicide

The gun homicide rate in the United States is 26 times higher than that of other high-income countries.13 Our country’s gun violence epidemic has taken an enormous toll on the LGBTQ+ community. From the Pulse shooting in Orlando in 2016, to youth suicides and anti-trans violence across the country, our community has suffered terribly as a result of our nation’s inadequate gun safety laws.

Transgender and gender-nonconforming (GNC) people are uniquely impacted by gun violence. An analysis of Everytown’s Transgender Homicide Tracker found that homicides of trans and gender-nonconforming people in the United States and Puerto Rico have been on the rise for the last several years. From 2017 to 2021, the number of tracked transgender homicides more than doubled (from 29 incidents in 2017 to 59 incidents in 2021). During this period, 73 percent of the trans people killed were killed with a gun. At the same time, lawmakers in states across the country have put forward record numbers of anti-trans bills14 along with dangerous gun bills. It creates an environment ripe for deadly gun violence fueled by hate. Anti-trans violence, and specifically anti-trans gun violence, is concentrated against the Black community. While just 13 percent of the trans population in the United States is estimated to be Black,15 63 percent of known trans homicide victims were Black women.16

Suicide

Studies show that LGBTQ+ people, especially LGBTQ+ youth, are at a higher risk of contemplating and attempting suicide.17 And access to a firearm triples the risk of suicide death.18 Most people who attempt suicide do not die—unless they use a gun. Ninety percent of suicide attempts with a gun are fatal, while only 4 percent of attempts not involving a gun are fatal.19 In fact, six out of every 10 gun deaths in the United States are suicides.20

According to the 2015 US Transgender Survey, 40 percent of transgender people report having attempted suicide in their lifetime, nearly nine times the national average.21 What’s more, the Trevor Project’s 2022 survey of nearly 34,000 LGBTQ+ youth ages 13 to 24 found that 45 percent of them seriously considered a suicide attempt in the past year and nearly one in five transgender and nonbinary youth had attempted suicide. Additionally, LGBTQ+ youth of color reported higher rates of suicide attempts than their white peers.22

These data imply that this epidemic of firearm suicide could have a disproportionate impact on transgender and adolescent members of the LGBTQ+ community. Members of the LGBTQ+ community are at greater risk due to the impact that social stigma, family rejection, bullying, harassment, and abuse have on their well-being.23 However, LGBTQ+ youth who reported their families provide high support of their gender and sexual orientation reported suicide attempts at less than half the rate of those whose families provide low or moderate support.24

Intimate Partner Violence

Intimate partner violence is also a major concern for the LGBTQ+ community, with particular vulnerability among transgender communities and youth. More than half of transgender people responding to the 2015 US Transgender Survey experienced intimate partner violence in their lifetime, and for nearly half of all survey respondents, this violence came in the form of coercive control.25 According to the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 44 percent of lesbians and 61 percent of bisexual women experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner, compared to 35 percent of straight women.26 Other research shows that compared to straight people, bisexual people are eight times as likely to experience domestic violence and lesbian or gay people are more than twice as likely to experience domestic violence.27 Dating violence also impacts LGBTQ+ youth, who experience such assaults at twice the rate of their non-LGBTQ+ peers, based on an HRC Foundation analysis of public-use data from the YRBSS.28

Firearm access helps fuel intimate partner violence and significantly increases the risk of lethal violence.

[dk-thrive]

I feel like I go into a phone booth and I turn into a poet sometimes. Most of the other time, I’m just Maggie who pushes the stroller.

In the fall of 2015 I sat in a chair in a coffee shop and wrote a poem on a legal pad, which is where most of my poems begin. I titled it “Good Bones.” The poem was published online in the journal Waxwing the following June—the same week as the Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando and the murder of MP Jo Cox in England.

You’re reading this book, so you probably know what happened next: the poem went viral. Reporters emailed, messaged me on social media, called. Meanwhile, I was parenting two children, ages three and seven. I was Violet’s mom and Rhett’s mom most of all—that was how I was known to people in my life, and that was fine with me. Even after the poem went viral, I was still hidden, cleverly disguised as one of the least visible creatures on earth: a middle-aged mother. As I told a reporter from the Columbus Dispatch, my hometown paper, “I feel like I go into a phone booth and I turn into a poet sometimes. Most of the other time, I’m just Maggie who pushes the stroller.”

It’s cynical to think the end of a thing is tucked inside its beginning, like the hidden pictures in a Highlights magazine—an umbrella, a pencil, a roller skate. Or a pinecone, a postcard, a poem. But my marriage was never the same after that poem.

—  Maggie Smith, from "Hidden Pictures" in “You Could Make this Place Beautiful: A Memoir” (Atria/One Signal Publishers; April 11, 2023) (via Last Tambourine) 

[dragoneyes618]

"The delayed clarity on what exactly happened in Jersey City muted some of the public empathy that instantly followed the previous attacks. So did the identities of the attackers, both of whom were Black, and their targets, who were Hasidic Jews - who, it has progressively become clear, many otherwise enlightened Americans view as absolutely fair game for bigotry.

This was obvious from reporting within hours of the attacks, which gave surprising emphasis to the murdered Jews as "gentrifying" a "minority" neighborhood. This was remarkable, given that the tiny Hasidic community in question, highly visible members of the world's most consistently persecuted minority, in fact came to Jersey City fleeing gentrification, after being priced out of long-established Hasidic communities in Brooklyn. More tellingly, as the journalist Armin Rosen has pointed out, the apparently murderous rage against gentrification has yet to result in anyone using automatic weapons to blow away white hipsters at the newest Blue Bottle Coffee franchise. What was most remarkable about this angle, however, was how it was presented in media reports as providing "context."

The "context" supplied by news outlets after this attack was breathtaking in its cruelty. As the Associated Press explained in a news report about the Jersey Cijty murders that was picked up by NBC and many other outlets, "The slayings happened in a neighborhood where Hasidic families had recently been relocating, amid pushback from some local officials who complained about representatives of the community going door to door, offering to buy homes at Brooklyn prices." (Like many homeowners, I too have been approached by real estate agents asking me if I wanted to sell my home. I recall saying no, though I suppose murdering these people would also have made them go away.) New Jersey's state newspaper, the Star-Ledger, helpfully pointed out that "the attack that killed two Orthodox Jews, an Ecuadorian immigrant and a Jersey City police detective has highlighted racial tension that had been simmering ever since ultra-Orthodox Jews began moving to a lower-income community" - even though the assailants never lived in Jersey City and apparently chose their target simply through internet searches for Jewish institutions in the New York area. The Washington Post began its analysis of the murders by announcing that Jersey City "is grappling with whether the attack reflects underlying ethnic tensions locally and fears that it could spark new ones" - even though the rest of the article described in detail how "longtime black residents and ultra-Orthodox implants alike say that they haven't experienced significant ethnic tensions here." Nonetheless, readers were informed, "the influx of Hasidic residents comes as many of the longtime black residents feel increasingly squeezed." This was all abut gentrification, the public learned. The assailants, who wore socially acceptable clothing, were expressing an understandable communal sentiment. The newly dead Jews, on the other hand, were members of the unharassed majority, despite being the country's top hate-crime target according to the FBI. They were also rich, despite experiencing the same poverty levels as the rest of New York and New Jersey. On top of that, they wore unfashionable hats. So it kind of made sense that people wanted to murder their children with high-impact explosives.

I was not able to find any similar "context" in media reports after the 2015 massacre at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, or the 2016 massacre at an LGBTQ nightclub in Orlando, Florida, or the 2019 massacre at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas frequented by Latino shoppers - all hate-crime attacks that unambiguously targeted minority groups. In each of those cases, as was true in Jersey City, media coverage included sympathetic pieces about the victims, along with investigative pieces about the perpetrators, the latter focused on how perpetrators were drawn into violent irrational hatred. But in reviewing media reports from the aftermath of these events, I found no coverage of how straight people in Orlando other than the perpetrator - in other words, reasonable, non-murderous, relatable "normal" neighbors - were understandably upset about gay couples setting up shop in the neighborhood and disrupting their "way of life," or about how white people with deep family roots in Charleston felt understandably wistful about the Black community's "takeover" of certain previously white neighborhoods, or about how non-Latinos in El Paso felt "squeezed" by ongoing "tensions" with Latinos who had pushed for more bilingualism in schools.

No one covered this "context," because doing that would be bonkers. It would be hateful victim-blaming, the equivalent of analyzing the flattering selfies of a rape victim in lurid detail in order to provide "context" for a sexual assault. That doesn't mean the intergroup tensions (or the problems with flattering selfies) aren't ever worth examining. It simply means that presenting such analysis as a hot take after a massacre is not merely disgusting and inhuman, but also a form of the very same hatred that caused the massacre - because the sole motivation for providing such "context" in that moment is to inform the public that those people got what was coming to them. People who think of themselves as educated and ethical don't do this, because it is both factually untrue and morally wrong. But if we're talking about Hasidic Jews, it is quite literally a different story, and there is one very simple reason why.

The mental gymnastics required to get the Jersey City attack out of my head were challenging, especially when the Jewish community int he New York area was treated in the two weeks following this massacre to more than a dozen other assaults of varying degrees, most of them coming during the festival of Hanukkah. These included Jews being slapped, punched, kicked, and beaten on the streets by people who made their motives clear by shouting antisemtiic insults, and many other variants on this theme that received much less attention. (One that shook me personally was when a young white man broke into my students' dormitory at yeshiva University at four a.m. and started a fire - using matches from the dorm lobby's Hanukkah candle-lighting.) All this was merely an intensified version of physical assaults on Hasidic Jews in New York that had been happening regularly for over a year - incidents that ranged from run-of-the-mill acts of knocking elderly people to the ground to the rather more advanced tactic of clobbering someone over the head with a large paving stone, causing a fractured skull.

This new normal culminated in a particularly horrifying attack, when a man entered a crowded Hanukkah party at a Hasidic rabbi's house in Monsey, New York, wielding a four-foot machete, and stabbed or slashed five people, all of whom where hospitalized; one victim, who fell into a coma, died several months later from his wounds. Stabbing Jews was apparently in vogue in Monsey, as this was actually the second antisemitic knifing in town in just over a month. The previous attacks victim was beaten and stabbed while walking to morning prayers, winding up in critical condition withe head injuries. Media coverage of these attacks also sometimes featured "context" (read: gaslighting), mentioning heated schoolboard or zoning battles between Hasidic and non-Hasidic residents - even after the perpetrator was identified as a resident of a town forty minutes away. One widely syndicated Associated Press article situated the previous week's bloodbath by informing millions of readers that "The expansion of Hasidic communities in New York's Hudson Valley, the Catskills and northern New Jersey has led to predictable sparring over new housing development and local political control. It has also led to flare-ups of rhetoric seen by some as antisemitic." In other words, the cause of bloodthirsty antisemitic violence is...Jews, living in a place! Sometimes, Jews who live in places even buy land on which to live. To be fair, there were many countries and centuries in which this Jews-owning-land monkey business was illegal, though twenty-first-century Hudson Valley, the Catskills, and northern New Jersey are sadly not among those enlightened locales. Predictably, this leads to sparring, and flare-ups. Who wouldn't express frustrations with municipal politics by hacking people with a machete?"

 - Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present

[mombian]

I first wrote this in 2016, shortly after the shooting at the #Pulse nightclub in Orlando that killed 49 mostly Latine, LGBTQ young people. Seven years later, I am reposting it as a reminder to remember, to teach, and to act. #HonorThemWithAction

[last-tambourine]

"In the fall of 2015 I sat in a chair in a coffee shop and wrote a poem on a legal pad, which is where most of my poems begin. I titled it “Good Bones.” The poem was published online in the journal Waxwing the following June—the same week as the Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando and the murder of MP Jo Cox in England.

You’re reading this book, so you probably know what happened next: the poem went viral. Reporters emailed, messaged me on social media, called. Meanwhile, I was parenting two children, ages three and seven. I was Violet’s mom and Rhett’s mom most of all—that was how I was known to people in my life, and that was fine with me. Even after the poem went viral, I was still hidden, cleverly disguised as one of the least visible creatures on earth: a middle-aged mother. As I told a reporter from the Columbus Dispatch, my hometown paper, “I feel like I go into a phone booth and I turn into a poet sometimes. Most of the other time, I’m just Maggie who pushes the stroller.”

It’s cynical to think the end of a thing is tucked inside its beginning, like the hidden pictures in a Highlights magazine—an umbrella, a pencil, a roller skate. Or a pinecone, a postcard, a poem. But my marriage was never the same after that poem."

~ Hidden Pictures, You Could Make this Place Beautiful, Maggie Smith

[rebeleden]

Marco Rubio Warns Christian Conservatives of the Costs of Gay Intolerance - The New York Times

GAY RUBIO HAS NO SOUL

STOP NAZI VANILLA ISIS

[kgreen200]

I've received this email from Faith and Liberty. Since they haven't included an online link this time, I've copied their email and am posting it below.

Chris Beck is a decorated Navy SEAL with 13 deployments. He received both a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart in his 20-year military career. But during all of that, life felt out of control. Beck said so-called medical professionals pushed him into treatments that “destroyed my life.”

After a single, short meeting with the Department of Veterans Affairs, Beck was advised to begin hormone therapy. But Beck said, “I was never transgender, male to female, or female to male, or anything.” He continued: “For me, transgender did not exist.” But at the advice of doctors, Beck “had unnecessary surgeries.”

Beck underwent chest augmentation and facial surgery, but then stopped before he succumbed to anything more severe. Now, nine years later, Beck is back to living his life as a man. He’s engaged to a woman and is speaking publicly for the first time against the LGBTQ agenda mutilating children.

L

Beck told the New York Post that “there are doctors doing surgery on 12-year-old children and that’s unacceptable.” They are doing to kids the same thing that ruined Beck’s life.

But if radicals in D.C. get their way, they will block every alternative for these children with mental health stressors like Beck had. They want to force them into experimental drugs and surgeries, even when gender confusion resolves in 85% of minors.

The “Equality Act” will make it illegal for anyone to offer hope of a healthy outcome. This bill is dangerously close to passing. Rush your critical faxes to Congress to stop HR 15. Urge them to block this bill. — Your Faith & Liberty team

Yesterday was the anniversary of the brutal mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, a known LGBTQ club. Angel Colon and Luis Ruiz miraculously survived the massacre. They have been totally transformed by the love of Jesus, and now they rescue those caught in the LGBTQ web of deceit.

Beck is not the only one who has been harmed by this destructive agenda, and he is not the only one who has found freedom. Chloe Cole is another person who has suffered similarly and is now publicly telling her story.

“I speak to you today as a victim of one of the biggest medical scandals in the history of the United States of America,” 19-year-old Chloe told Congress. “I speak to you in the hope that you will have the courage to bring the scandal to an end, and ensure that other vulnerable teenagers, children, and young adults don’t go through what I went through.”

This battle is much bigger than a handful of people. Democrats in the U.S. House have teed up the Equality Act. This will destroy everything that Chloe is fighting for. And these radicals just got one more vote, now have 213 in support of HR 15. If they get just a few more votes, this bill will prevent states from protecting children against child mutilation.

This dangerous bill will affect everyone. It will not just infringe on religious freedom — it will trample it. But HR 15 goes far beyond destroying religious freedom. It will harm parents and children. Rush your urgent faxes to Congress to stop the “Equality Act.”

This “Equality Act” will have a huge, unthinkable impact if it is passed. It will legally mandate everything that the Biden administration is already attempting to push. The "Equality Act" will mean that:

No restroom will be safe. Biological men will have access to girls’ and women’s locker rooms, dressing/shower rooms, sport activities, and shelters.

Churches will be forced to provide equal access to LGBTQ ceremonies if the facilities are open to natural marriage ceremonies.

Churches and religious schools will be forced to hire staff involved in LGBTQ conduct; give men access to women’s restrooms, locker rooms, showers, and sports; allow boys to bunk with girls on camping and overnight trips; and provide insurance to cover hormones, mutilating surgeries, and chemical and surgical abortions.

From pre-K, children will be taught that they can choose their gender, will be encouraged to experiment with each other to find their "identities," and will be able to demand opposite, both, and neither sex pronouns (he for a girl, mx for both, zie for neither).

Noncompliant churches and schools could lose federal, state, and local tax exemptions and accreditations.

Abortion up to birth will be the law of the land.

Pregnancy resource centers will be forced to provide abortion referrals.

If this bill passes, you will not escape its reach into every business, church, school, and more. It will even apply to a small online business in your home!

The truth is that 100% of all so-called “gender reassignment surgeries” fail — every single time. You cannot become a different gender no matter how much you mutilate your biological one. There are about 6,500 known differences on a cellular level between boys and girls, and no number of surgeries will change this biological fact.

HR 15 is a real threat. The Democrats need only a few more people to cave to pass this bill. Please take a stand for our innocent children now. Fax Congress and demand they VOTE NO on HR 15.

DOUBLE the impact of your gift through our Challenge Grant. Your gift of $25 will become $50, $100 has the impact of $200, $500 becomes $1,000, and beyond.

You can also support our Faith & Liberty ministry on Capitol Hill by signing up for recurring monthly donations.

Peggy Nienaber, Senior Vice President

Mat Staver, Chairman

Rev. Gregory Cox, Senior Pastor

P.S. DOUBLE YOUR IMPACT with our Challenge Grant. And sign our petition.

Sources:

“Chloe Cole Opening Statement on Transitioning and Detransitioning.” C-SPAN, July 27, 2023. C-span.org/video/?c5079802%2Fchloe-cole-opening-statement-transitioning-detransitioning.

Hains, Tim. “De-Transitioner Chloe Cole Tells Congress: Let Me Be Your Final Warning.” Real Clear Politics, July 27, 2023. Realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/07/27/de-transitioner_chloe_cole_tells_congress_let_me_be_your_final_warning.html.

Kime, Patricia. “Retired Navy SEAL and Trailblazer for Transgender Troops Detransitioning, Critical of VA Care.” Military.com, December 13, 2022. Military.com/daily-news/2022/12/13/retired-navy-seal-and-trailblazer-transgender-troops-detransitioning-critical-of-va-care.html

Miller, Joshua Rhett. “Ex-Navy SEAL who detransitioned warns transgender teens: ‘You need to slow down.’” New York Post, December 12, 2022. Nypost.com/2022/12/12/ex-navy-seal-who-detransitioned-warns-transgender-teens-slow-down/.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 6.12 (after 1940)

1940 – World War II: Thirteen thousand British and French troops surrender to Major General Erwin Rommel at Saint-Valery-en-Caux. 1942 – Anne Frank receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday. 1943 – The Holocaust: Germany liquidates the Jewish Ghetto in Brzeżany, Poland (now Berezhany, Ukraine). Around 1,180 Jews are led to the city's old Jewish graveyard and shot. 1944 – World War II: Operation Overlord: American paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division secure the town of Carentan, Normandy, France. 1950 – An Air France Douglas DC-4 crashes near Bahrain International Airport, killing 46 people. 1954 – Pope Pius XII canonises Dominic Savio, who was 14 years old at the time of his death, as a saint, making him at the time the youngest unmartyred saint in the Roman Catholic Church. In 2017, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, aged ten and nine at the time of their deaths, are declared as saints. 1963 – NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers is murdered in front of his home in Jackson, Mississippi by Ku Klux Klan member Byron De La Beckwith during the civil rights movement. 1963 – The film Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, is released in US theaters. It was the most expensive film made at the time. 1964 – Anti-apartheid activist and ANC leader Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison for sabotage in South Africa. 1967 – The United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declares all U.S. state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional. 1975 – India, Judge Jagmohanlal Sinha of the city of Allahabad ruled that India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had used corrupt practices to win her seat in the Indian Parliament, and that she should be banned from holding any public office. Mrs. Gandhi sent word that she refused to resign. 1979 – Bryan Allen wins the second Kremer prize for a man-powered flight across the English Channel in the Gossamer Albatross. 1981 – The first of the Indiana Jones film franchise, Raiders of the Lost Ark, is released in theaters. 1982 – A nuclear disarmament rally and concert is held in New York City. 1987 – The Central African Republic's former emperor Jean-Bédel Bokassa is sentenced to death for crimes he had committed during his 13-year rule. 1987 – Cold War: At the Brandenburg Gate, U.S. President Ronald Reagan publicly challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. 1988 – Austral Líneas Aéreas Flight 046, a McDonnell Douglas MD-81, crashes short of the runway at Libertador General José de San Martín Airport, killing all 22 people on board. 1990 – Russia Day: The parliament of the Russian Federation formally declares its sovereignty. 1991 – In modern Russia's first democratic election, Boris Yeltsin is elected as the President of Russia. 1991 – Kokkadichcholai massacre: The Sri Lankan Army massacres 152 minority Tamil civilians in the village of Kokkadichcholai near the Eastern Province town of Batticaloa. 1993 – An election takes place in Nigeria and is won by Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola. Its results are later annulled by the military government of Ibrahim Babangida. 1999 – Kosovo War: Operation Joint Guardian begins when a NATO-led United Nations peacekeeping force (KFor) enters the province of Kosovo in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. 2009 – A disputed presidential election in Iran leads to wide-ranging local and international protests. 2014 – Between 1,095 and 1,700 Shia Iraqi people are killed in an attack by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on Camp Speicher in Tikrit, Iraq. It is the second deadliest act of terrorism in history, only behind 9/11. 2016 – Forty-nine civilians are killed and 58 others injured in an attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, United States; the gunman, Omar Mateen, is killed in a gunfight with police. 2018 – United States President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea held the first meeting between leaders of their two countries in Singapore. 2019 – Kassym-Jomart Tokayev is inaugurated as the second president of Kazakhstan.