Heritage Foundation Says That Of Course GOP Will Use KOSA To Censor LGBTQ Content
from the democratic-support-censoring-lgbtq-speech dept
We’ve talked a lot about KOSA, the “Kids Online Safety Act” that has massive bipartisan support in Congress. The latest version was introduced with 26 Senators as sponsors or co-sponsors. We’ve explained over and over again how the bill is unconstitutional and will actually do a lot to harm kids.
Of course, like so many of these “bipartisan” anti-internet bills that have bipartisan support, the support on each side of the aisle is based on a very different view of how the bill will be used in practice. We went through this last year with the AICOA antitrust bill. Democrats supported it (falsely) believing that it would magically increase competition, while Republicans were gleefully talking about how they were going to use it to force websites to host their propaganda.
Now, with KOSA, again you have Democrats naively (and incorrectly) believing that because it’s called the “Kids Online Safety Bill” it will magically protect children, even though tons of experts have made it clear it will actually put them at greater risk.
Meanwhile, Republicans are now freely admitting that they’re going to use KOSA to force websites to censor LGBTQ content. They’re literally proud of it. The Heritage Foundation, which at least used to have some principled stances before being taken over by culture warriors without any principles, is bragging about how it will use KOSA in this manner:
In that tweet, Florence Ashley calls out an article on Heritage’s website laughably entitled “How Big Tech Turns Kids Trans” (which, um, is not how any of this works), and includes this paragraph:
Lawmakers can also help. Raising the minimum age for internet use (as the Child Online Privacy and Protection Act would do) may be one way to protect kids from online harms. Another step in the right direction would be to prohibit the sexual exploitation of minors and the promotion of content that poses risks to minors’ physical and mental health (which the Kids Online Safety Act would do). If we seek to protect kids online, we must guard against the harms of sexual and transgender content.
Ashley, correctly calls out that they’re openly admitting how they’ll use KOSA to censor content. And Heritage replies in a quote tweet doubling down that this is exactly their plan:
Yes we do. Keeping trans content away from children is protecting kids. No child should be conditioned to think that permanently damaging their healthy bodies to try to become something they can never be is even remotely a good idea.
Leaving aside that this framing is utter nonsense, it’s also none of lawmakers’ business what individuals and their doctors decide is the healthiest way forward for anyone.
So, um, seeing as over a dozen Democratic Senators, including Richard Blumenthal, Ben Ray Lujan, Tammy Baldwin, Amy Klobuchar, Gary Peters, John Hickenlooper, Chris Murphy, Chris Coons, Brian Schatz, Mark Warner, Peter Welch, Maggie Hasan, Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, and Bob Casey are supporting, can anyone ask them why they’re supporting a bill that Republicans are saying directly they will use to silence LGBTQ speech?
Again, the enforcement mechanism in the bill is that state Attorneys General get to bring lawsuits against websites for not removing such “harmful” content. And if you don’t believe that there are GOP state AGs itching to bring exactly these lawsuits, you haven’t been paying attention.
I get that Blumenthal and Klobuchar have both made it clear that they don’t care one bit about how Republicans will use their bills to take away rights of the public, but could someone ask the others on that list why they’re supporting such a bill?
Filed Under: 1st amendment, censorship, gop, kosa, lgbtq, state ags
Companies: heritage foundation
Comments on “Heritage Foundation Says That Of Course GOP Will Use KOSA To Censor LGBTQ Content”
Congrats, Heritage! You’ve single-handedly torpedoed KOSA far better than it’s critics could!
At least the Heritage Foundation is being earnest, can’t say the same for Bluthmenthal though.
oh no this article turned me trans
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Perhaps the Democrats shouldn’t have started the ball rolling on this by criminalizing talk therapy for people who are unhappy with whom they are sexually attracted to.
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That has only happened in the fictional universe the right is using to convince people to allow their rights to be removed.
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To anyone reading this comment:
This anonymous asshole is Hyman Rosen, a known transphobe who’s been banned from conservative sites/forums and blog comment sections, presumably for being an abusive, harassing asshole.
He has ben told multiple times to pretend to be a decent person, to no avail.
He doesn’t believe in actual science or religion, despite his claims, utters Republican talking points like how bums should be policed, is a known Nazi sympathaizer, and believes that violence should be applied liberally to the homeless, LGBT+ folk, and probably minorities and First Nations folk.
Any more interaction than what is necessary to debunk his treasonous lies should be avoided.
In this case here, Hyman is NOT referring to actual psychotherapy, but things like “gay conversion” and forms of memory reliving that harm the patient psychologically. Perhaps someone else can fill me in on that since it has been a long time since Hyman has used that talking point.
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At least it’s pbvious where that bot you’re talking about gets its programming from.
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Now now, that’s no way to talk about Matty B.
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Both are violent, abusive assholes who believe in white supremacy.
It does get hard to tell the difference. Especially when both have been told to fuck off and only respond with phys8cal threats on our being.
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The only way is to make sure the straight people have their privileges revoked. Sexual minorities have been threatened and endangered for far too long.
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Herman we know it’s you…
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“conversion ‘therapy’ ” ≠ actual therapy
But of course you support literally torturing queer people to make them live according to your wishes.
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Hey Herman remember when you thought all pornography were documentaries?
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That’s not what was banned. Do you even know what conversion therapy is? Because it is not, and never has been, “talk therapy” with nothing else.
Love it
REALITY is so much fun. But hiding from WHAT IS. IS NOT A CHOICE.
Love we are trying to save Children by Lowering the Working age in some states. The Concept is/was long ago, THEY ARE CHEAP LABOR. The corps have cut back so much, that there isnt Much more to Cut. They prefer an Excess of workers, as then they can debate the wages you CAN earn.
For all the BAd things they keep pointing at, It has always been there. Just cause someone shines a light dont mean you have to STARE AT IT. There are ways to fix things, there have been laws about 90% of this stuff for along time. Thinking JAILS do much, isnt a solution.
What I find promising, Is the definition of Conservative. And that REAL conservative people are looking around and Wondering are republicans REALLY conservative?
If you want to protect kids from sexual exploitation perhaps stop getting pissed about drag shows and start doing something about the priests & churches who are responsible for thousands of sexually abused children & moving predators to new hunting grounds with no warnings.
Some state AG just released a report and they found a number that was 4x what the church admitted to & a bunch of damning information about how much they knew about what was happening and did nothing to stop it.
But then this is just more bullshit culture war things making people think they are saving the kids from the evil evil trans… you know like how they claimed no one was gay until they were recruited by another gay so we needed to stop all the gays.
Now they are being pissy because Pride is shoving teh gay in their faces, I guess being white & str8 means never having to understand that the other 11 months of the year we are getting heterosexual bullshit rubbed in our faces constantly… if we can handle that you can suck it up for a month pookie… unless there is another reason you keep looking at photos and images of pride events.
Last I checked the gay mafia isn’t rounding you str8 assholes up and forcing you to watch the events despite how many of you behave.
But then we’re still at 0 Drag Queens since Nov busted for molesting kids and over 140 pastor/priests having molested kids in the same period… perhaps its time to stop pretending we’re the dangerous ones and look at the fscking wolves telling you they’ll take care of your kids while your out burning pride flags and terrorizing people because you imagine, with no fucking evidence, that they are molesting kids.
But then these bitches can’t even handle kids learning that slavery happened in the US, let alone that black people were abused during & after slavery because white folk believed they were better than them because of skin tone and imaginary bullshit.
Oooh it might make kids hate themselves for being white…
No its more likely to show them that the hatred & bigotry you are trying to teach them to embrace is wrong, that we’re all human beings and the only differences are imaginary so some can feel superior to others for nothing more than a genetic difference.
One wishes people would bother to hold politicians to account when they flat out lie about things.
No 10 yr old is getting gender surgery, no doctors are snatching kids form the streets and forcing them to be trans, there is no secret cabal trying to destroy white people by transing the planet.
They have always existed, its just now science has managed to get past the backwards my skyfreind said its wrong bullshit that infects society.
We aren’t making more autistic children, we got better testing.
Its not vaccines, y’all claimed it is for decades now but can never offer up any ‘evidence’ that holds up to the least bit of science or facts.
Just had one of the loudest voices in anti-vax land die of “something” and the faithful are claiming he was injected with venom or they spiked the meds they used to treat him for covid… or in the alternative, this dipshit caught covid, decided it wasn’t a real disease, and did stupid shit to fight the demon semen from winning the battle for his soul which did NOTHING to stop the infection and the damage it did.
The party of smaller government, who insists on being in all the bathrooms, lockerrooms, bedrooms, exam rooms to make sure nothing that might offend them happens… but get really touchy when we’re worried about the kids in the choir room getting molested by their spiritual leaders.
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"trans" != "LGBTQ" and porn != "LGBTQ content", you liar
You’re going to a great deal of effort to make it sound like Conservatives “hate teh gays” and it just exposes what a partisan shill you are.
Principally, they’re just trying to keep porn away from kids. That’s probably impossible, but don’t get it twisted, that’s the goal. You’re trying to make it sound like they just want to deny gay people exist, and you’re just lying about it.
The second subject, which the tweet is about is the matter of trans peer pressure/ indoctrination.
Actually, no, there’s a TON of evidence that’s how it works. Or at least that young people identifying as trans is for the vast majority of them a matter of social conditioning — peer pressure and in some cases purposeful conditioning — i.e. it’s a fad. A recent poll said that like 20+% a certain age group identified as “trans”, “nonbinary”, etc, …………which lol, no they don’t, but that is seen as the cool thing to say and be now.
Which would be fine except that is sometimes used to justify lie-altering, permanent, often sterilizing procedures. And that’s what Heritage is objecting it to. “Big tech” (really they mean social media) just drives it in the same way it helps drive anorexia.
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Yawn…. Oh.. you again…. flagged!
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It really doesn’t take much effort. Read up on queer history and you’ll find that the people most openly opposed to the recognition of equal rights for queer people over the past few decades have been conservatives—in both politics and religion. That still holds true today. If you think conservatives wouldn’t leap at the chance to undo Obergefell, you’re not paying attention.
The phrase “trans content” can include porn, yes. But unless that’s specified, you can safely assume that the phrase refers to any kind of content involving trans people in some way that is supportive and respectful of trans people—including accurate information about medical treatments for trans people and online communities for trans people to talk about their lives with one another.
Yes, that’s pretty much one of their goals. Why else do you think conservatives keep bristling at things like sports teams celebrating Pride, books with queer characters being in school and public libraries, and gay characters (no matter how incidental) showing up in Disney movies?
No, there isn’t. The only “evidence” you and your transphobic brother-in-arms Hyman Rosen have ever shown to back such a claim is a bunch of third-hand stories spread by known transphobes who most certainly have an anti-trans agenda. Until you can provide something more than anecdotal stories that may not even be true, you can’t say you have evidence of “Big Tech” transing anyone’s gender, let alone the gender of a given child.
And even if some people identify as trans or non-binary when they’re not, so what? They all deserve the freedom and safety to question their gender identity—regardless of whatever conclusion they ultimately reach.
Prove it with actual evidence beyond “Jesse Singal said she heard from a friend that a kid of a friend of theirs had their gender transed by Twitter”.
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“Blah blah, I’m a victim and everyone who doesn’t agree with me is a bigot”
You said the same thing 5 different way and I’m honestly not even going to bother responding to that line by line, it’s meaningless at this point, you’ve done cried wolf too many times.
“You’re a bigot!” literally just means “I’m a liberal and don’t have an actual argument” at this point.
….did you, did you think the accusation was tech companies were doing the surgeries?
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Did you?
You can whine and bitch about “Big Tech” all you want here. But the idea that social media services are even remotely responsible for a rise in the number of trans people in the world is ridiculous. Think about this: When the number of gay people in the world seemed to increase in the years after Ellen DeGeneres came out, do you think that was because people thought being gay was “trendy”? Because you might want to remember that Ellen sacrificed her sitcom for the sake of coming out publicly as gay, and gay people were (and still are) targets of violence and hatred even after Ellen came out.
It’s not that Ellen made people think “hey, being gay is cool” or Twitter made people think “hey, being trans is cool”. In fact, it’s largely not “cool” in the context of American society. Look at Florida: That state is doing everything it can to turn the lives of trans people into a living nightmare—to make sure that any trans person in Florida either flees the state, goes back in the closet, or kills themselves. Being queer in 2023 isn’t necessarily as bad as it was in 1993, but it’s not as if queer people are accepted/tolerated across the nation. People still get physically assaulted for being queer. Anti-queer parents still do horrible things to their children if their children come out as queer. To act like being queer is some “hot new fad” is to ignore the fact that being openly queer in the United States is akin to painting a target on one’s back.
The number of visibly out queer people isn’t due to social media (or anything else) turning queerness into a “fad”. It’s due to people feeling that much braver about coming out—even in a society that openly despises queer people. People were always queer; maybe they didn’t have the words or the courage to express it, but their queerness was always part of themselves. They didn’t pick it up on the streets like it was a drug and they didn’t choose to be queer like they chose what shirt to wear on a given day. Queerness isn’t a fad and social media isn’t making it one.
I mean, who would willingly want to join a population demographic that is actively maligned by a significant part of society?
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I mean, who would willingly want to join a population demographic that is actively maligned by a significant part of society?
Something that really should have completely killed the ‘people choose to be gay’ thing the second the first bigot thought of it, but I suppose if they were smart enough to spot the contradiction they wouldn’t be bigots in the first place.
Sure, people choose to identify as something that can and has gotten people disonwed by their families, kicked out of their homes, mocked and belittled, assaulted and in a higher-than-zero number of cases killed, that makes perfect sense.
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Exactly. Nobody chose to get into Fifty Shades of Grey, or be attracted to non-binary transformation porn, or snuff, or vore, or piss, or stink, or any of the various fetishes previously thought incompatible with human existence. We evolved these niches and now the boring-ass straight normies want to take them away.
We will overcome, because true love always wins.
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Fuck off, Hyman.
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Yes, tell him to fuck off. There is no room for freaks of nature such as he, not after his kind spent millennia ruining the planet for the rest of us progressives.
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Your “ultra-liberal ultra queer” sockpuppet schtick was old months ago, Hyman. Now it’s just as annoying as your transphobia. Fuck off.
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Again, this isn’t Hyman. But you can keep mocking him and believing that I’m him, because it does nothing but help our narrative pushing the paradigm shift.
We just scored big gay marriage wins in Japan, and soon the rest of us will follow. Finally we can collectively tell our dads to fuck off for telling us “boys don’t cry” and marry JoJo Pillar Men as was the natural progression of human evolution.
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…hallucinated nobody with any capacity for rational thought, ever.
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Hey if you start simping for Herman there’s a good chance we will actually fuck you as long as you pretend to hate it.
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All of you do, because you’re hateful, spiteful wastes of space that deserve no sympathy, help or support. You rape children into unwilling women and sacrifice them in the name of some dumbass imaginary friend. You lied, cheated, and forced your way into privilege and power you’re not entitled to.
The only way forward is for your kind to be wiped out from the gene pool before you run this planet into the ground.
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Of course we identify as trans. We’re sick and tired of you disgusting pervy boomers sliding into our DMs and trying to slide into our genitalia. You’re angry because all you have left is trans and non-binary and ace kids for you to fuck with, instead of the 1950s where you’re one degree away from dragging a woman by the hair back into your mancave.
Your era is over, old man. Nobody’s going to miss you. You could fucking throw yourself off a cliff tomorrow and the first thing people will ask is if the ground is okay, because you made your fucking bed and we will see that you LIE in it.
Because you and your type are TERRORISTS. TERRORISTS. TERRORISTS. And we will SCREAM it from the top of the world until everybody gets it.
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Herman we know it’s you bro.
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Do you see, Hyman, how you are not winning this war? Even when I mock the fuck out of you someone else thinks it’s you. You can’t touch us, Hyman. Your time in the fucking sun is OVER.
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Nice try Herman.
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Mock Hyman all you want.
That means we’re winning.
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Do I gotta get the chart of how left-handed people exploded in population after we stopped trying to “correct” them, and then stopped growing?
It’s not conditioning, or grooming, or whatever. It’s giving words to explain how these people feel, and those people feeling safe or emboldened to express themselves. I don’t see why it’s unbelievable that 80% of the population identifies with their birth/doctor assigned gender (which is the flipside to 20% being trans or nonbinary). It’s more than I’d think, but, eh, not a stretch.
Plus, you do realize nonbinary just means you feel that you don’t fit into either the man or woman box, right? A lot of nonbinary people even still use the same pronouns they did all their lives. It’s a personal feeling, and shouldn’t be attacked any more than personal faith.
(By the way, I’m PRETTY sure the poll you’re referencing is actually “20% LGBTQ”, which, if you spend time in any city in America, makes 100% sense to be the natural levels, unrestrained by authoritarian codes.)
Yes, I’m sure SOME kids are pretending or falsely believe they’re trans to feel like they fit in with their friends. But… that’s, uh, any social phenomenon, good or bad or neutral. I sure didn’t like football or Family Guy growing up, but I absolutely pretended to in order to gel with my friends. But the rest of them did, and still do.
And, most permanent forms of gender-affirming care simply aren’t performed on minors, unless the minor clearly needs it to prevent suicide. Which is, like, I don’t know, less than 10 a year? It’s not a lot. So, even if you suppose one of those kids each year wants to detrans, that’s a 1/10 “failure”… There are other lifesaving surgeries that have a higher failure rate, where failure is, well, an earlier death.
Finally, keep in mind that the first step the Nazis took in controlling society was not cracking down on Jewish people, trade unions, or Communists, even as they openly railed against them. No, in fact, it was gay and trans people they pursued, jailed, and killed. The first books they burned? All LGBT research or diaries. One of the first sex reassignment surgeries was performed in Weimar Germany, much to the disgust of the Nazi party. It’s likely the Nazis set back LGBT rights and understanding decades. Now, Republicans and international conservative allies are trying to do the same.
Ask yourself if you REALLY want to be on the same side as the Nazis on, well, anything. This isn’t mere name-calling either, it’s the exact playbook. Not a metaphor or exaggeration.
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You’re fucked, Matthew. Time for the bimbofication tech and the big black cocks to take your penis privileges away. Your wastes of space called your offspring won’t miss you in the slightest. The drag queens will be taking care of them, not the dumbass priests you keep putting in charge.
'Straight and CIS', the only GOP accepted orientations
… point for being temporarily honest bigots I suppose? Nothing like saying the quiet part out loud, admitting that you think treating trans people as people is harmful to kids and you plan on using a pending law to ‘correct’ that to make clear exactly what you think ‘protecting’ children involves and why you are supporting the bill.
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I mean, they kinda have to at this point. Trump killed the idea of subtlety as part of the GOP playbook. Anything less than a full-throated condemnation of queer people is going to be seen as weakness by the Trumpist part of the Republican voter base…which, given Trump’s popularity in conservative circles, basically is the Republican voter base.
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… partially because they chased away the republicans who were not Trump sycophants. Or perhaps DeSantis sycophants, coming up…
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There’s also no room for the Jews and minorities as well, if they actually get this off the ground.
As well as women.
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Don’t worry. More and more women are seeing that being cis straight no longer benefits them, now that they no longer need to live under the thumb of the patriarchy. Far better to fuck each other without the risk of accidental unwanted pregnancies.
The Heritage Foundation, which at least used to have some principled stances before being taken over by culture warriors
Accepting the heavy lifting of the qualifier some: When the hell was this mystical time?
“No child should be conditioned…”
That not how any of this works. Your conditioning programs, however…
GOP ignorance
Well, at least the children won’t catch being gay if this law is passed!
Okay, for the sarcastically challenged… /s
Having failed to legislate LGBTQ+ people out of existence during the Bush era, with public opinion and the courts ruling against them, the same people are back to try again, with christian zealots that were hand picked by the federalist society polluting every level of the courts. If at first they don’t succeed, they’ll be handheld through the changes they need to make in their legal gerrymander of gay rights, making surgical cuts until any expression of being LGBTQ+ or showing support in public is impossible, all done in the name of ‘WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!’
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But now support for equality is very high especially among youth so their attempts will again be futile but maybe in red states they can win sadly
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But now support for equality is very high especially among youth so their attempts will again be futile but maybe in red states they can win sadly but blue ones will be safe so atleast something is better than nothing and hopefully the situation will improve in future when today’s teens will become the prominent voters
Why are so many Democratic politicians so often shown to be so bad at their jobs and so willing to take right-wing think tank nonsense at face value? It can’t possibly be that they’re really Republicans or otherwise more interested in the appearance of resisting theocratic fascist oligarchy while actually greasing the path to it than actually resisting it, can it?
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Honestly I’m coming up blank for good excuses as to why democrats would go along with garbage like this. Either they are so monumentally stupid and gullible that they believe that they are doing the right thing even when actual experts tell them otherwise or they are in it solely for the PR and don’t care about who they hurt as a result.
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Remember, doing it for the children and “doing it for the children” are entirely two different premises with the same outcome, although in one instance the collateral damage is an added bonus for its proponents.
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No, that’s pretty much it. With a few exceptions like AOC and Bernie Sanders, the majority of Democrats in Congress are right-of-center. The difference between them and Republicans is how far away from the center Republicans have driven themselves in their pursuit of power.
The straight people will not win.
They have been a curse on this planet for far too long.
They will either pick up a pride flag and stand with us and accept their new place in a progressive world or be called terrorists.
Their move. We’ll continue being fabulous.