#persecution of the gay community

[tomorrowusa]

A second Trump administration would make the first one seem like a festival of human rights and democracy.

High on the list of groups targeted for repression is the LGBTQ+ community. And Trump could accomplish his homophobic goals simply by packing his administration with extremist Christian nationalists. No new laws would be necessary. And with the power to appoint federal judges, including SCOTUS, his decisions could withstand legal challenges.

By contrast, Joe Biden is the most LGBTQ-friendly president in US history. Those who claim both parties are alike probably are afflicted with political dementia.

President Biden's Pro-LGBTQ Timeline

Pro-Trump members of the LGBTQ community are analogous to something like "Gazans for Netanyahu". If they enjoy persecution, let them go to Russia or Iran.

It's almost always easier to prevent dictatorship than it is to get rid of it after it's in power.

[angrylesbianatwork]

Communism for homosexuals

For starters, communism would be the dream of conservatives and republicans alike, not the other way around. Sex was only perceived to be designed for reproduction, therefore heterosexuality was seen as the only sexuality that was "healthy". On top of that, the gender expectations and life conditions where extremely rigid. Plus, the complete censorship of what was deemed as unfit; there was strict control when it came to one's private life.

That being said, I will focus my attention on how it all intruded on same-sex attraction.

Article 200

Homosexual relationships were considered to be a criminal offence and we're punished by law with 1 year up to 5 years in prison.

It was said that there is no such thing as being homosexual and communist, that it is a capitalistic idea. We were the enemies of the people, opposite to the communist values.

It was illegal to even search for someone of the same sex, you could end up taken by the militia/police for showing mere interest, sometimes just accusations were enough.

Everyone could be an informer, even your neighbour. If one got caught, and they caven in from all the physical and/mental abuse during their interrogation and ended up denouncing others, even under the promise of not ending up in jail, that leniency was not guaranteed.

There was a general fear of not getting caught by the militia. (They kept a file of morals with their names, photos and statements.)

After getting out of prison, they'd lose their jobs and they were marked for the reason they lost it, their family disowned them and everyone knew about it and now, especially, militia had their eyes on you to make sure they behaved.

Intelectuals had the biggest target on their heads, because the regime believed they were more prone to homosexuality, due to their contact with the outside world.

Under the threats imposed by the communist regime, some seeked asylum in foreign countries or just fled the country all together.

There were arrests done even in 1993, the last one was pardoned in 1998, Mariana Centiner spent 3 years in prison.

The article was barely repealed in 2001 at the insistence and pressure of international organisations.

Even after the regime had fallen, homosexuals continued to get harassed on the basis of the Article 200. The orthodox church had a hand in the constant railing up of the people, delaying it to be repealed.

Homophobia from those years is still felt today.

[bicheetopuff]

So I made a post some months back. It was my most popular post for a while, not sure why but, it was. But in light of the new chapter I wanted to bring it back up.

At the time, this post had shippy connotations and still does but, I want to talk about the bigger part of the post. I’m sure we can all agree that the picture that chapter 370 is painting is far more important than any possible canonicity of a fanon pairing. I got a lot of reblogs on this post talking what I put in tags so I’d like to extend my point.

I saw people talking about how this chapter is boring and not important and I felt disappointed… but I realized why they feel like that. Because this part of the story isn’t relatable to everyone. It’s the same reason people call Deku a bad MC. The same reason most of the western audience reduces Uraraka to just a love interest. The reason why people find it hard to empathize with and understand Touya or Bakugou. They can’t relate and are only here for the fight scenes. Which is fine. We’re all products of our environments and experiences so yea it’s okay to not find a certain plot line relatable but to say that it’s boring and “not important to the story” is saying that you’re unable to make out the bigger meaning and you’re kinda invalidating the real people that have actually experienced persecution.

The biggest conflict in mha arguably is the way people of authority treat others based on their looks, quirks, and talent. And we can take Bakugou and Hawks as examples for why mindless praise and ego strokes at such a young age can be just as bad as being looked down upon and bullied. They’re different experiences but both resulted in toxic mindsets about themselves and changed the mindsets of the people around them as well (the hero commission seeing hawks’ talent and training him to be a warrior essentially [like nagant but her experience started much older], bakugous friends and teachers praising him to the point where his ego inflated and causing the people around him, including his parents, to believe that he’s an untouchable force that never and shouldn’t need help [minus deku, which is where their conflict came from]).

The mutant rebellion is just a more obvious way of telling what’s been going on for the entire story. Which goes back to the tag in my original post:

I think the morals of the story is why it’s [mha] is more attractive towards POC, the lgbt community, those that have been looked down upon for being different, or people that have experienced having expectations they couldn’t reach being thrown on their shoulders…

What’s being explained in this chapter isn’t just some plot device. It’s a moral that’s applicable to real life and you saying it’s not important makes you look like a prick. And it’s not just an issue amongst individuals, it’s an issue highly influenced by celebrities and government officials. Making it a systemic and societal issue, just like it’s being portrayed in mha.

tl;dr

If you can’t relate to anything that’s going on or being said in the recent chapter and you don’t like it, shut the hell up and skip the chapter. Let the people who can relate gain a little bit more respect for Horikoshi for even thinking about addressing an issue this blatantly.

[generallemarc]

 She says she is being targeted for her role in enacting an anti-gay bill condemned by rights watchdogs and others.

That bill made homosexuality a felony offense! No shit you're being targeted, that's the whole point of sanctions! They go after corrupt bastards(or bitches in this case) who abuse their office and violate the rights of the people they govern, and she's done both.

[genderqueerdykes]

14 year old transgender girl Pauly Likens was unjustly robbed of her life due to trans panic between the dates of June 22nd and July 3rd, 2024. say her name.

i have seen only one or two posts about this, but none of them include her name and it sickens me. Her name is Pauly Likens, a 14 year old transgender girl from Sharon, Pennsylvania who met up with a 29 year old man whom she met on Grindr who was brutally murdered and her body was dismembered because she was a trans girl. she went missing on June 22nd, and her dismembered body was found on July 3rd, 2024. her body was DISMEMBERED and thrown into a river. she was not only murdered but BRUTALLY murdered. she was 14 years old. 14. she couldn't even legally drive yet in the united states. she just barely graduated elementary school.

her mother is fighting for her case to be processed and acknowledged as a hate crime. i am disgusted to find out that my home state of Pennsylvania only considers racial discrimination as real discrimination that can be persecuted by law. gender identities and sexual orientations are not considered at all. lawyers and government officials are also trying to deny that it was a hate crime, because her murderer was a self admitted gay man. i don't care what type of queer you are: there is never an excuse to lay hands on a transgender person just because you don't like how they identify.

this is utterly sickening. to say this wasn't a hate crime is living in denial. i don't care if her murderer was gay. he's a murderer who had a clearly charged reason for doing this. he stole a life from a young transgender girl for no reason other than she identified in a way he didn't like. he's not dangerous because he's gay, nor is he exempt from being transphobic. his sexuality had nothing to do with this. not only was this man a dangerous transphobe, but a predator. a 29 year old man willingly met up with a 14 year old child. this man is dangerous for reasons that have nothing to do with his sexuality. he's a transphobic child predator. he deserves no sympathy or to get off scott free just because he's gay. he willingly met up with Pauly. she didn't force him to do anything. she was a child, and he is an adult.

please say her name. while talking about the dangers of Grindr and how minors should not use it, please include her name. yes Grindr is an extremely dangerous platform for trans women, men, and trans people in general, but that shouldn't be the focus of your conversation about her. don't use her death as a platform to discuss how fucked up grindr is without acknowledging who she was as a person. don't just make her another statistic on a page. she was a real person, a child, who was robbed of her life, and robbed from her community. she is not just another number in a long list of trans panic murders. her life meant something. say her name. fight like hell for Pennsylvania to acknowledge that her death WAS a hate crime. their archaic outdated laws need updating.

her family has a GoFundMe to give her a proper burial, please consider donating or spreading the word about it:

here is a news article that genders her correctly where you can read more about what happened:

rest in power, Pauly Likens, we miss you. you are loved. we will fight like hell for you and your family. remember her.

[omgthatdress]

José Sarria was a World War II veteran who made his living as a popular drag queen at San Francisco's Black Cat Bar. When drag queens at the bar were harassed by the police for impersonating women, he made them cat-shaped tags that said "I'm a boy" so police would not have cause to arrest them. He also encouraged those charged with crimes to never plead guilty and draw the police and DA into long, drawn-out trials that couldn't prove anything.

In 1961, Sarria made history by running for the San Francisco board of supervisors, becoming the first openly gay person to run for public office in the United States. When city officials realized that Sarria would win because there were four candidates and five seats, they flooded the ballot with 34 candidates, ensuring that Sarria would lose. Eventually, the seat he ran for would be filled by Harvey Milk.

In spite of the loss, Sarria continued with his political activism. He founded the Tavern Guild of San Francisco, which protected gay bars from police persecution, and the Society for Individual Rights, which helped educate the gay community about their rights when facing the police.

Sarria continued to perform in drag. When he was crowned queen at the Beaux Arts ball in 1964, he declared himself "Her Royal Majesty, Empress of San Francisco, José I, The Widow Norton," and founded the Imperial Court System, a network throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico that did fundraising for various LGBT charities.

[museumofferedophelia]

I think a lot of the "queer" community forgets that LGBT spaces were meant to protect marginalised groups from persecution.

I don't think there has ever been a recorded case in history of a "cishet aromantic man" who was persecuted.

No one has gone "oh Jakey just likes to fuck chicks but doesn't want to be in a relationship, we should stop talking to him." No man has been bashed on the streets and left for dead because he liked sex but didn't want to get married. No man has had his parents and family abandon him because he didn't want to have a formal relationship.

The fact that y'all want to go to pitch for straight men who just want sex, but don't show the same level of advocacy for gay, lesbian and bisexual people is disgusting.

No straight people in LGBT spaces, fuck the rest of you. Get your head out of your asses.

[memecucker]

There are some religious lgbt people that honestly sound like “My religious community dislikes me for homophobic reasons but the gay community also dislikes me because I’m also homophobic. Truly that makes me the most persecuted”

[poetry-protest-pornography]

Okay, since Pride is fast approaching, and all the Hot Takes about who should and shouldn't be allowed at Pride, and "family friendliness", and whatever have started. And we're in a time of unprecedented legal attempts to imprison, persecute, and kill us, I'm going to expand on my comments on a different post:

A whole lot of people willfully misinterpreting "kink at pride" as some kind of live sex show on a float, and not people in leather and masks and pasties and thigh-highs and walking just a step behind their partner.

Whole lot of people completely ignoring the place that the leather community, and kinksters have in the early days of the gay liberation movement. And we would be literally nowhere without trans people taking up the fight for all of us. Nowhere.

Whole lot of people putting their hands over their eyes and covering their ears to avoid having to see the mile high writing on the wall that says "you're next".

Respectability politics has never gotten us anywhere where we're safe. Anything other than a united front is going to get us all jailed and murdered with the state stamp of approval. So regardless of how you feel about how "normal" puppy play, or leather daddies are, guess what, they're part of your community, so bite your tongue and fucking kumbaya, because as far as other people are concerned you are no different than they are.

Shut the fuck up about "normal", because as far as the people making the laws are concerned, we're all an aberration and they want us all out of the fucking parade. Sit down and read some history; this isn't new, this isn't their first time making us illegal. Right now, they're targeting drag queens and transgender folks, and they are doing their best to turn their existence into criminal acts, so that they can be put to death. That's happening, right now, everywhere. And again, you, in your cute little subtle rainbow T-shirt and khakis? You're the same as those "dangerous queers" that are being legislated against. You're going next on the list.

Stop helping them sign our warrants because you're uncomfortable with some fucking leather straps; the cops will be happy to round you up, too, in your business casual queer attire, when they're done with the kinksters and the drag queens and our trans siblings. And then, we'll be without some of our loudest and most passionate voices in the fight, because you didn't like their god-damned outfits, or their fucking pronouns, and you let them be taken away for the sake of "normal".

Shut the fuck up.

[im-literally-just-an-olm]

You know, I wanna say I remember seeing a James somerton video a while back, it was on asexual erasure in the Queer community, and like it was so unbelievably clear how just it wasn't thought through, and just kinda blatantly acephobic. One of the first things said was the co-host (think he was the co-writer somerton hired but he deleted the video and his entire channel so I am unsure) was part of a pride organization, where they had a debate if ace people should get a spot, and if they were queer enough to be in this organization, then somerton go onto say "there's no persecution like gay people have faced." right after giving an example of persecution specifically toward asexual people. They also say its currently classified as a disease which hasn't been true since 2013, which never should has but whatever. They then go onto say that there's never really been asexual-based conversion therapy which is just untrue period. (there's actually a source I found that says ace folks face it more, source further down) I was like 20 minutes into this like hour long podcast at this point and I had to stop, because it was just hard to watch. As an Ace dude this blatant acephobia just pisses me off beyond all belief, and as a not horrible person, the rest of this mans plagiarism, sexism, and transphobia is just Horrific to me as well. I'd figure id add my experience with this mans content into the discussion. Idk what this is its midnight and im tired Source btw:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5b3b2d1eed915d33e245fbe3/LGBT-survey-research-report.pdf this pdf, section 5.7, specifically 5.7.1 "Amongst cisgender respondents, there was not much variation in who had undergone or been offered conversion therapy by sexual orientation. Bisexual respondents were the least likely to have undergone or been offered it (5%), and asexual respondents the most likely (10%)"

[raptoth]

In celebration of pride month, I’d like to recognise our evil gays in media. Namely, Gustavo Fring. He shows us that not only can gay men rise from the persecution of early 2000’s North and South America, but also be horrendous drug kingpins capable of deplorable acts. This pride month, take a step back and thank the evil gays in your community.

[tomorrowusa]

Republicans think that their high profile homophobia can squeeze a few more votes out of their shrinking and aging base. But they are doing serious damage to themselves in the medium to long term with future voters.

The LGBTQ+ high school students and their allies will not forget for the rest of their voting lives the GOP “don’t say gay” laws, anti-trans persecution, and homophobic hate speech condoned by high ranking Republicans and their buddies in the rightwing media.  

About 1 in 4 high school students identifies as LGBTQ, according to a report the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released on Thursday, using data from 2021.

In 2021, 75.5 percent of high school students identified as heterosexual, the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) found.

Among high school students, 12.2 percent identified as bisexual, 5.2 percent as questioning, 3.9 percent as other, 3.2 percent as gay or lesbian and 1.8 percent said they didn’t understand the question.

The CDC says the number of LGBTQ students went from 11 percent in 2015 to 26 percent in 2021.

Here is the Obama White House after the 2015 Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage.

A President Ron “Don’t Say Gay” DeSantis would never allow that. More likely he would try to dismiss the Supreme Court for being too “woke”. The same is true of almost all the other GOP presidential candidates. The GOP is officially homophobic.

To preserve freedom and democracy in the US: Vote Blue No Matter Who. 🏳️‍🌈

[jewishvitya]

Tal Mitnick, an 18 years old Israeli that refused to serve in the military:

It's not just a couple of soldiers that are bad soldiers or that enact violent occupation on Palestinians, it's actually a whole system of violence. Of pulling people into the army and making them work for the occupation and for oppressing Palestinians.

Militarism in Israel is very entrenched in society. And the military is some golden goose that you're not allowed to touch. You're allowed to criticize the government, you're allowed to go out for gay rights, for women's rights. But when it comes to criticizing military action against Palestinians or other oppressed communities, this is totally out of the norm. You cannot speak against the military because it's so entrenched in society.

A lot of conversations start with the military, and because most people did serve, it's seen as this kind of thing that everyone needs to pass in order to become an Israeli.

So. Yeah. When you're older you don't feel ostracized as much because after a while it's less relevant to daily life. At least in my experience, I didn't serve and it's not really talked about much at this point.

In Jewish Israeli society, the military is trusted more than most other institutions. Tbh, more than any other institution I can think of. And it's seen as a right of passage. Some people will be okay with you if you volunteer for a social service instead - work at hospitals, schools, etc. Others think you shouldn't get the choice, and unless there's a medical issue you should be going to the military.

The narrative of self defense is absolutely believed, so by refusing to serve, those kids are seen as saying "I will enjoy the sacrifice made by others, but I will not contribute myself." It's seen as ungrateful. But that's if you don't express a moral objection to the military.

If you challenge the military itself, you're challenging Israeli society. And that's how it's taken. "I refuse to participate in the occupation" - "So you're saying I did something bad by serving. You're saying I'm a bad person." And when most of Israelis served in the military, and those that didn't serve often still support it or have loved ones that did or still do, this is challenging the moral character of pretty much all of us. Which, it should.

The military nurtures a mindset of dehumanization to a scary degree. I listened to a few interviews with stories from Breaking the Silence, an organization meant to bring to light the way the military abuses Palestinians, and there's something described by Yehuda Shaul.

He tells the story of serving in Hebron, in the West Bank, and he describes the daily stated mission of soldiers there.

While on patrol at night, they pick a random Palestinian house - explicitly one that they have no intelligence against, a civilian family - and they get in, wake the family up, separate men from women, search or something, get on the roof, jump to the next roof, get into that house, wake that family up, treat them the same way.

Again, at random. And he described two goals for this:

One, to create the feeling of being persecuted, and two, to make our presence felt.

They want Palestinians to feel beaten down and powerless, and they want them to feel that the military is everywhere, so they're too scared to resist.

This isn't random rogue soldiers, this is what the military does there on a normal day. And he said it's impossible to treat a population this way without seeing them as less human than we are.

I don't know if I can just say that the military is another tool for indoctrination in addition to everything else it does. But as a kid, I had a left-leaning friend from the Tel Aviv area, and we'd argue a lot. Because you don't need to be a full on leftist to disagree very strongly with a teenage settler. And as I was going through the process of changing my mind, I saw him going through the same process in the opposite direction - he became way more right wing during his military service. He told me the stories of why, and all those stories did was make me feel like I don't even know this person. I wonder sometimes how many young people go through the same.

[jesterlesbian]

there's something so deeply moving to me about using the icthys (jesus fish) in the center of tim's quilt, and how it relates to his catholicism. as another raised-catholic-gay-person, we're taught that the icthys was used as a symbol of community and resistance under persecution during roman rule etc etc.

tim loved god but he never felt like god loved him back. he obviously struggled with being gay and what that meant for him as a devout catholic when his own religion actively called for harm against this fundamental part of him.

and to me, putting the icthys in the center of his quilt shows that tim was someone who fought for community, who fought against persecution and fought to protect vulnerable people, and ended up dying fighting for those ideals as well. even if his own religion, which he loved fiercely, would call him an abomination

[matan4il]

Hey! Anon from the last time here! By "Pro-Palestine Westeners" I was partially referring to all these students from Columbia and MIT who were illegally occupying the school grounds and harassing/hurting the actual Israeli/Jewish/Middle Eastern/the other generally decent students.

I know there's Pro-Palestine people who are actually decent, but all these college students are risking suspension/expulsion/jailtime because they'd rather chant pro-Ha*as slogans rather and listening to news from biased fonts rather than educating themselves on what's really happening. Some people would rather stay in their ivory towers, rather than going outside and touching grass.

I also know there's LGBT+ people in Palestine and other parts of MENA, and all I wish for them is that they live long enough to find a place where to live freely and out of the closet, without suffering persecution from their government.

Hope this clarified at least a little bit my other ask, and sorry it sounded so ambiguous. Finally, let's hope that Eden Golan gets at least in the top 5 at Eurovision 2024, just to spite anyone who booed her.

Hi Nonnie!

Thank you for sending this ask to clarify the previous one, it's what I thought you meant, and I'm glad to hear I wasn't too off.

TBH, as a gay woman myself, with gay Palestinian friends who are a part of my queer community, and whose struggles I know well, that's the first group I thought about as well. Then I thought about the fact that under Hamas law, husbands can rape their wives with impunity. I thought about the way the Christian population (the biggest non-Muslim minority under Palestinian rule) has demographically plummeted in the areas that Israel passed on to Palestinian control as a part of the Oslo accords. I thought about black people, whose ancestors were kidnapped because of the Trans-Saharan (i.e Arab) trade slave, and are still treated as lesser humans because of that (based on their skin color, they are still referred to in Arabic to this day as "Abeed," meaning slaves).

I think this last group, which most people don't even realize exists, deserves a bit more info shared about it:

Pretty sure black activists in the states, who don't know the history (and present) of the Arab slave trade, or the persisting anti-black racism that exists in Palestinian society, have no clue they're being exploited against the same Jewish community, which stood with Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, even having some of its members paying with their very lives for this. I hope they wake up and realized they're being used for antisemitic purposes by the same people who enslaved and are still discriminating against some of their people.

But it's funny how the world's activists and human rights defenders seem to ignore the plight of these marginalized Palestinians, isn't it? Almost like, because they're NOT being oppressed by Jews, rather by fellow Palestinians, and can't be used to justify antisemitic rhetoric and action, then they don't count. So much for minority solidarity and intersectionality, right? It doesn't extend to Jews, and it doesn't extend to Palestinians who can't be weaponized against Jews.

Regarding the last bit of your ask, bless you for being hit with Apollo's dodge ball and predicting Eden making it into the top 5, despite every effort made by the jury members of so many countries, the awful people in the audience, and members of fellow delegations. It was magnificent!

Sending you hugs! xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[battybiologist]

James Somerton is a misogynist piece of shit, but the way he speaks about lesbians is an infuriating betrayal of the queer community.

Legally, lesbians were and are treated on the same level of bad as gay men. Gay panic doesn't and has never excluded them, same as convertion therapy, same as anti-sodomy laws, same as police brutality, and many more I could mention.

And socially? Women as a whole are already persecuted, so add homophobia to the mix, and I doubt that'd lead to less discrimination than what gay men suffer from. And that's not even getting into how shittily trans lesbians are treated

But frankly, we all know why he said that. The section where he misgenders Nate Stevenson and Rebecca Sugar and throws them under the bus really says it all: it's because, in his fucked up mind twisted by misogyny, there was more "lesbian representation" in media.

The kind of representation where they're demonized, dehumanized, and erased, where their deaths and hardships are treated shallowly and without a hundredth of the compassion spared for their straight leads, where they're fetishized and objectified for the sole eyes of straight men, sometimes all of the above at the same time.

Fuck this guy.