Dave Slusher - Tech StuffFeb 8

RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/116030091259678118

So many things about right wing ideology that seemed inexplicable to me become understandable as the #EpsteinFiles get released.

15 years ago, no one cared about #trans people. They were free to lead their boring lives. Then kind of all at once, demagogues around the world became actively anti-trans, spouting rhetoric and pushing legislation. "Why now?" I wondered then and to this day.

Because Jeffrey Epstein was anti-trans. He asked his friends to take up the mantle and of course they did. The wave of anti-trans sentiment we suffer through today is because people wanted to suck up to a rich pedophile. No deeper conviction than that, no coherent philosophy. Epstein said so and thus it was.

He is no longer around to ask but I can only assume his motivation was because while sexually abusing teenaged girls Epstein did not want to be surprised by a penis. This whole moral panic is because of the sexual abuse preferences of one billionaire influencer. Good job, everyone, carrying the torch of a pedophile.

Show threadKaia 🦚Feb 8
@geniodiabolico
you also have to remember that evangelical Christians built up a huge political apparatus for minority rule, that required a political wedge issue. They used abortion for decades, but then they basically won when the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade. The laws were already friendly to harming immigrants, so they turned their focus to trans people
Show threadElaine

@kaipeacock @geniodiabolico the Religious Right have been targeting LGBT+ people as well as abortion rights from way back. The Family Research Council identified trans rights as the wedge issue to begin breaking apart LGBT+ rights as a whole and made it a centerpiece of their anti-LGBT+ campaign. The anti-hate group the Southern Poverty Law Centre has been reporting this since at least 2017:

https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/christian-right-tips-fight-transgender-rights-separate-t-lgb/

Christian Right tips to fight transgender rights: separate the T from the LGB

Last week, from Thursday, October 13 through Saturday, October 15 the anti-LGBT hate group Family Research Council put on its annual Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC., A prime networking event for the Christian right where anti-LGBT and anti-Muslim rhetoric is rife, this year’s summit welcomed its first sitting president as a speaker, Donald Trump.

Southern Poverty Law Center
Feb 8 at 2:42pmWeb
Show threadKaia 🦚Feb 8

@Mschatelaine
definitely agree!

I'm speaking from first-hand knowledge about this as someone who worked for a SPLC-identified hate group for a summer back in 2012 before I deprogrammed from evangelical hate and eventually came out.
@geniodiabolico