Top 7 Melania Trump Body Double Costumes on Amazon

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F*cking Hell, Trump Just Signed a Memo Enacting Trans Military Ban

In July, Trump announced (well, tweeted) that “the United States Government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US Military,” citing something clearly baseless about “overwhelming medical costs.” At the time, his announcement was made without the coordination or apparently even the knowledge of the Pentagon; the defense department scrambled to figure out what the President’s plan even meant, let alone whether they could or would execute it.

Today, in the midst of some of the most intense and bipartisan criticism he and his administration have received since the inauguration — after two weeks in which the President has defended violent white supremacists, went on an hours-long unhinged tirade as police tear-gassed protesters outside, and parted ways with his Rasputin-esque white nationalist chief strategist — it was announced that the administration has apparently made it a priority to work with the Pentagon on putting Trump’s plan into action. An official directive was signed by Trump that prohibits transgender people from joining the military, and additionally gives Defense Secretary Mattis a great deal of latitude in terms of deciding the fate of transgender people already enlisted. The directive also apparently cuts off funding coverage for gender confirmation surgery for enlisted troops, except (allegedly) for those cases already in progress. It’s not clear at this juncture what this means for coverage of other transition-related healthcare, or if Trump and writers of the directive are aware of other transition-related care at all.

Within these proposed parameters, what reality will look like for currently enlisted transgender people is extraordinarily unclear. The directive allows for a six-month implementation period; what the end point of that “implementation” will look like is extremely murky, with spokespeople for the administration “unable to answer questions about whether the estimated thousands of transgender service members currently serving would be allowed to remain in the military.” This enormous uncertainty leaves the lives of thousands of people in unbearable flux in terms of their employment, their housing and education, their physical safety in a fraught and fractured political and work environment, and what any possible future might look like.

In July, when this plan was originally floated, Politico speculated that the decisions about trans troops were being made as part of a long-term bargaining session within the Republican party about money:

House Republicans were planning to pass a spending bill stacked with his campaign promises, including money to build his border wall with Mexico. But an internal House Republican fight over transgender troops was threatening to blow up the bill. And House GOP insiders feared they might not have the votes to pass the legislation because defense hawks wanted a ban on Pentagon-funded sex reassignment operations — something GOP leaders wouldn’t give them.

Trump’s plan (or lack thereof) to fund his xenophobic fever dream of a border wall has been one of the many scandals on his plate this week — he has recently alternately offered to fund it via a government shutdown, solar panels, or gutting other government agencies — so that may explain the timeline for this decision. It’s also possible, as it always is with this administration, that they’re totally unrelated and there is no real plan behind the scenes or going forward other than being violent to trans people. The consistency of that inconsistency is of course no comfort to the people whose present and future have been irrevocably impacted by this absurd and vindictive decision; we don’t know precisely what the implementation of this memo will look like, but we can surmise that, like everything else this administration has done, it will be deeply harmful to trans people. As always, the voices and experiences of those most directly impacted should be centered today and in the future; you could start by reading these responses of trans people who have experience with the US military on the ban.

https://twitter.com/SmartAssJen/status/901223670261071872

Trump’s White House Turns Its Laser Focus to Solving “Reverse Racism” in Higher Ed

Yesterday, the New York Times obtained documents indicating that the Trump administration is working to “redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants.” In the midst of almost too many domestic scandals and legal investigations to count, unceasing staff shakeups that one would imagine to have brought White House operations almost to a standstill, and various international crises requiring the White House’s comment or reaction, the administration has its sights set on making sure the Abigail Fishers of the world face as few obstacles as possible between them and not showing up to their 8 am composition seminar.

There hasn’t been an official announcement of this initiative; what we do have is an internal communication asking for lawyers to volunteer for a project related to “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.” It’s not entirely clear yet what this initiative will look like, although we seem set to find out relatively soon — applicants are supposed to submit their résumés by August 9th — but given the Justice Department’s enthusiasm for dropping or reversing positions held by the Obama administration in regards to cases involving discrimination, it isn’t likely to be good. It’s especially concerning alongside the fact that as part of the sweeping cuts the Trump administration has proposed from its outset, the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights was meant to see major staffing cuts. From the New York Times:

In a lawsuit challenging Texas’ strict voter identification law, the Justice Department switched its position, dropping the claim that the law was intentionally discriminatory and later declaring that the law had been fixed. Mr. Sessions has also made clear he is not interested in using consent decrees to impose reforms on troubled police departments and has initiated a sweeping review of existing agreements. Last week, the Justice Department, without being asked, filed a brief in a private employment discrimination lawsuit. It urged an appeals court not to interpret the ban on sex-based discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as covering sexual orientation.

Of course, the “problem” of discrimination against white students applying to universities that this project claims to attempt to address does not exist. In fact, white women are the group who has benefited most from affirmative action policies as a whole. Even if they weren’t, the fact of the matter is that white people can’t be disadvantaged by a system of higher education that was designed by and for them — a system which was only recently in American history forced to consider people of color as potential members of its academic and cultural community at all and still rarely reflects or serves them in a meaningful way in terms of curriculum. Unfortunately, as is generally the case, these facts don’t matter; neither the Abigail Fishers of the world nor the Trump administration can or will be swayed by facts about the structural realities of the US’s past and present.

This initiative isn’t based in a misunderstanding of the facts, but an attempt to recreate them; not being duped by a narrative about what white people are entitled to, but cheerfully shaping it. The strategy of a fearmongering far right in the US (and in a broader historical sense, the strategy of white supremacy) has long been to suggest the existence of terrifying problems that they can then be relied upon to solve. The Trump administration is taking up this ancient tradition with bureaucracy and tax dollars; in lieu of doing any of the work of governing our fractured and fraught nation, it can continue creating offices and departments to address the imaginary concerns of frightened white people.

Much like the office of “Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement, or VOICE,” — again created to publicly oppose a problem that it again feels deeply absurd to have to point out obviously does not exist — this move is an attempt to cash a fake check to Trump’s voters. Trump can’t bring back jobs because the jobs don’t exist anymore; he can’t build his wall because he never had a plan for it in the first place; he can’t lock up Hillary Clinton; he can’t put together even a marginally workable idea for what healthcare should look like. All he can do for them is create imaginary solutions to the imaginary problems he reassured them really existed.

Unfortunately, the extensive reverse-racism LARPing that the Trump administration is doing may well have real consequences for real people, despite its basis in total fallacy. Although the Supreme Court upheld the affirmative action program at University of Texas last year, there are several more pending lawsuits against other universities for similar programs, and it’s entirely possible that Trump’s Justice Department will issue guidance or otherwise weigh in on them. It’s hard to say what exactly this new civil rights department project could potentially accomplish; even if they never manage to do more than write memos, however, the Trump administration has been looking to cut funding to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Department since the inauguration.

Any of the limited resources being spent on this project are being taken away from actual civil rights work, to the extent that there was any chance of it being accomplished under this administration in the first place.

The Babadook or Cuca: More Internet Haikus

^{feature image via Sítio do Picapau Amarelo youtube}

well, LGBTs
the babadook or cuca
i’m going cuca

the floor is good takes
*business insider jump splits*
*forbes runs up the wall*

are millennials
killing the sport of baseball
and other bad things

that’s my favorite part
like blood diamonds and tide pods
are on par with bees

what layer of hell
is craigslist’s housing section
what penance is owed

best reply caption
and it works with everything
is just the word ‘why’

aggregated posts
they’re a bold look to be sure
free labor’s en vogue

could aggregation
work in academia
oh is that research

here’s a fun idea
mass text your tinder matches
boom, pop up gay bar

what wouldn’t age well
in the modern meme era
are the ‘got milk?’ ads

it’s adorable
people hearting to and fro
like it’s not public

that age old question
of can you ever go home
but for logging off

are there loyalists
like “i’m team common white girl”
and “no i’m dory”

what would you rather
instagram habits revealed
or bank account drained

the silver lining
of the new state of twitter
is i work out now

stress exercising
thanks, internet news cycle
would buy from again

when you think you’re slick
and your date sends a screenshot
of your latest tweet

what’s going to happen
when 4-5 hits 69
you’re all in my thoughts

amazon wish list
link in bio kind of girls
you inspire me

27 Things That Exude More Positive Energy Than Hope Hicks Thinks Donald Trump Does

Today, White House spokesperson Hope Hicks went high-key extra by distributing a press release dedicated entirely to praising the positive energy that radiates around the bag of gas and lies we know familiarly as “The President of the United States,” reading:

President Trump has a magnetic personality and exudes positive energy, which is infectious to those around him. He has an unparalleled ability to communicate with people, whether he is speaking to a room of three or an arena of 30,000. He has built great relationships throughout his life and treats everyone with respect. He is brilliant with a great sense of humor . . . and an amazing ability to make people feel special and aspire to be more than even they thought possible.

27 Concepts or Things That Exude More Positive Energy Than Donald Trump

1. A Black Hole

I used to really like the song “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden, but the frontman of Soundgarden died while we were at A-Camp.

2. These wet rocks

3. This empty bag

oops I guess we left the marinara sauce and the pasta at the store again

4. This trash can

Even if this trash can still had bloody tampons in it, it would still exude more positive energy than Donald Trump.

5. A colonoscopy

fun!

6. Your homophobic uncle

“Just don’t rub it in my face,” he pleads as you continue to exist

7. This face our friend Carly made last week

8. Season Six of The L Word

9. Bacterial Vaginosis

Of course you are!

10. Skins Fire and/or Getting a Skin Graft

This picture works for both

11. A Wormhole

Byeeeeeee

12. A Tapeworm

Here, it’s candy

13. When they list the side effects in a commercial for Chantix

Some people had their husbands leave them, but out the back door instead of out the front door, which was confusing

14. “The Gentlemen” from Buffy

This might actually be a picture of the Trump Administration’s inner circle, TBD

15. The Hellmouth from Buffy

bye!

16. The first of week of Whole 30

Already hates advocados

17. When someone insists you stop everything to watch a youtube video they like, and then when you do it won’t load, and then when it does it’s not funny

18. Black mold

19. When you try to download a picture of Black Mold from Shutterstock and find out somebody on your team has already downloaded this same picture of black mold from Shutterstock at some other time for some other undoubtedly dark reason

20. When this video is not available in your country

:-/

21. The Menstrual Cycle

22. Google image searching “baby seal clubbing”

Don’t do it

23. Soup Made of Salsa and Warm Water

“Which honestly is a revelation i wish i could’ve had when i was at my poorest in my early 20s” – Laneia, Executive Editor of Autostraddle.com

24. Debs

just this trip?

25. The last three pages of “The Well of Loneliness”

Trigger Warning:

26. “Not to be that person, but…”

BYE

27. Five Signs You’re Holding On To Negative Energy

Sign #1: You Had Secret Meetings With Russia

Steal Their Looks: The Donald Trump Administration

Anyone else watch The Last 100 Days of Diana, the Martin Bashir follow-up special chronicling the events leading to Princess Diana’s death? No? This is a 30-year-old, played out, and quite frankly exploitative topic? Me neither. Gross! Anyway, without even watching that, we know Lady Di was a person who could bring about real change with style. She shed light on the AIDS epidemic, was almost single-handedly responsible for the worldwide ban on the use of land mines, and fundraised for countless other charities – all while occasionally dressing as if she were coding!

Of course, she was in a position of power to do so. Some might say she was simply making good on the time, money, and exposure afforded to her. What else might you do besides help other people in that situation? Well, you could do other things. Take for example the current U.S. administration. They do all sorts of other things! And not only are they serving up our wholesale demise – like Diana, they’re serving looks. Now you can, too. All the inspiration you could ever need is right here. Take a look at these rule-breakers (and then, literally, put them in jail!):

Commander in Chief, Donald Trump

Vice President, Mike Pence

Attorney General, Jeff Sessions

Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan

White House Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon

Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin

Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson

Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos

Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson

Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt

Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross

Stunning!

Five Lessons Today’s Queer Activists Can Learn From ACT UP

The inauguration of 45 filled me with dread, despair and helplessness. The obstacles felt insurmountable, and I laid in bed with the worst cramps I’ve had since I was a teenager. It was a coincidence that I started to read How To Survive A Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS by David France. My mom, the sister of an AIDS victim, gave me the book for Christmas. She always tells me how much my uncle Adrian would have loved getting to know me, and the least I can do to honor that stolen opportunity is try to learn about the health epidemic and state violence that murdered him.

ACT UP member and TAG founder Peter Staley in an iconic image used on the cover of the documentary How To Survive A Plague.

As I dug into that 600-page book, exquisitely written by journalist David France who was writing and loving in the NYC AIDS community during the 80s and 90s, I was enraptured by the story of doctors, activists, researchers, sex workers, journalists and Wall Street executives linking arms to conquer the worst health crisis of the 20th century. No one in power cared about the plight of hundreds of thousands of gay and bisexual men, nor about the other groups predominately affected, including lesbians, trans people, and queer and straight people of color. So queers joined together and made it too expensive, too much of a publicity nightmare, and too dangerous for politicians and medical gatekeepers to not care. ACT UP and the Treatment Action Group (TAG) mobilized people with AIDS (PWAs) and allies to educate themselves and others about the reality of the disease and the available science, and then they took action.

My relationship to my own privilege and oppression had shifted dramatically after the election, and everything felt more urgent. I read this story of unbearable urgency and thought about just how much we can learn from our queer and trans forebears who made AIDS chronic instead of deadly (at least in theory — millions are living with the disease because of the medical advancements that ACT UP and TAG made possible. However, more than one million people die every year of AIDS because treatment is cost-prohibitive or otherwise inaccessible). Here, inspired by the book and documentary How To Survive A Plague, are five lessons we can learn from the AIDS movement.

1. Get press — or make your own

ACT UP got great press by proceeding as if they had nothing to lose — because they didn’t. Their work was a matter of life and death. Performance artist Ray Navarro went to actions dressed as Jesus, protestors chained themselves to pharmaceutical company waiting rooms. After years of not being able to get anyone to mention the AIDS crisis outside of gay newspapers like The Native, they weren’t afraid to make a scene to get a few column inches or minutes of airtime. They also made their own press. Much of the archival footage in Plague is camcorder video that ACT UP activists took of themselves and each other.

A protestor dressed as Dorothy outside of Trump Tower as part of an action against housing inequality. Source: Slate.com

In this age of viral videos and ice bucket challenges, finding ways to create publicity for your cause, action or policy aim could be the difference between a tepid, frustrating experience and a truly impactful political moment.

2. Play to your strengths

AIDS activists included organizers, scientists, doctors, politicians and artists. They included people willing to get arrested over and over again and people who put on suits and ties and A-line skirts to meet with high-level political officials and drug developers. The terminology they used was “insiders” and “outsiders.” The outsiders would make noise and raise hell to create a pathway for the insiders to get the meetings they needed to advance political and medical goals.

I used to feel shame because I don’t feel comfortable holding up signs at protests. I think my news reporter training is too ingrained. But there is so much I can do. I can write, first of all. I can give money, I can show up for friends in need, I can call my representatives. Find your niche, use your skills and leverage your power to make the most impact.

3. Seize momentum

People With AIDS and their allies were never satisfied, and that’s part of what made them so successful. When the FDA, the Bush Administration, or pharmaceutical companies granted one of TAG’s demands, they were immediately ready with plans to take it further. They didn’t just insist that companies make drugs available, they insisted they follow TAG’s recommendations for implementation and treatment.

It’s safe to assume that the institutions blocking us from dismantling oppressive systems will always try to give us as little as possible in an effort to pacify marginalized communities. Vigilance and preparedness will allow us to leverage small gains into bigger victories.

4. Check your privilege

In the early stages of the disease, HIV primarily affected white gay men. After all, the gay community was largely segregated. However, over time men of color, trans women, and cis women also began contracting the disease. They were often excluded from the leadership of activism and the from clinical trials for potentially life-saving medicines. For example, by 1986 it was clear that Black and Latino communities were affected by AIDS at disproportionately high rates, and they struggled even more than white gay male communities in coastal cities to acquire any medical attention.

Although the source materials in How To Survive A Plague demonstrate some awareness of how not OK that was, my overall impression is that this is one area where we have to do better than the leaders of ACT UP and TAG. Now as then, trans women, queer people of color, bisexuals, and other marginalized groups experience risk factors such as depression, poverty, risk of experiencing abuse, employment and housing discrimination, and more at even greater rates than white gay men and cis lesbians. We have to incorporate these understandings into an activism that is not only intersectional but that centers the experiences, work, and needs of our most marginalized siblings. For myself, my next step is to learn more about the role of trans women, bisexuals and queer people of color in early AIDS activism.

5. Be kind

I’ll leave you with this clip from the documentary of Spencer Cox, who died shortly after the film was released.

“You make your life as meaningful as you can make it. You live it and don’t be afraid of who’s going to like you, or are you being appropriate. You worry about things like being kind. You worry about things like being generous. And if it’s not about that, what the hell’s it about?”

Nationalism Plus States’ Rights Are a Nightmare for Queer People

feature image via shutterstock.com

I grew up seeing the Confederate flag a lot, absorbing the conflicts between nation and state, discrimination and liberty that it represents. After September 11, 2001, gas stations next to the highway in north Georgia where I grew up began selling little copies of the stars and bars as a reminder of Americanness — whatever that was. The motto “The South will rise again” was a popular slogan among some of my classmates, yet the same people who valorized secessionism were fierce national patriots with “Support Our Troops” bumper stickers — a contradiction so normalized that it came to make sense in an odd intuitive way. Fifteen years later, President Trump’s administration, using the motto “America First” to appeal again to an ambiguous sense of America, is dissolving federal protections and regulations in the name of individual liberty. We’re witnessing a curious coupling of fervent nationalism and a turn towards individualistic states’ rights initiatives, and it has unique repercussions for queer people.

Queer people are disproportionately impacted by the dissolution of federal regulations, many of which were implemented in the Obama era specifically to protect low-income people, people with chronic illness, people of color, and people whose gender identity and/or sexual orientation has been used against them as a barrier to employment. The Trump administration has eliminated protections on transgender students’ bathroom rights, lifted federal Internet privacy standards, and has begun the process of dismantling environmental protection guidelines governing clean air and water. Native American sovereignty, already constantly undermined under previous administrations, has been further subverted in favor of corporate greed as progress continues on the Keystone XL pipeline. One way we might unravel these dizzying changes is by looking to history — the still-ubiquitous Confederate flag and the very real presence of the KKK in our mainstream political landscape nearly demands it. The history of anti-Black racism in the United States from the 19th century to the present reveals ongoing intersections of nationalism and individualism that shape American politics.

Maybe the reason Donald Trump wants to pretend nobody has studied the Civil War is because his administration knows even a cursory look at history will expose their tricks.

In the 1860s, the Confederate States of America formed as a states’ rights-oriented backlash against social and economic directives from the federal government, including a primary conflict over the rights and personhood of Black people in America — slavery. The Southern states’ backlash against the federal government was not simply a backlash against government itself, it was a struggle against a government that attempted to legislate the end of a particular form of economic exploitation. Those who benefited, economically and socially, from the exploitation of Black people wanted to maintain their privilege and resented any changes that diminished their power. Their rights (read: privileges) were more important to preserve than the rights (read: personhood) of Black Americans. Even after the country was reunified at the end of the war, most former slaveholding states used state-level politics to continue exploiting and disenfranchising Black Americans. Following the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, individual former Confederate states passed Jim Crow laws that legislated segregation until 1965. Furthermore, in Northern states, patterns of housing and workplace discrimination prevented Black Americans from experiencing equal treatment even under laws that purported to offer it.

Today’s broad spectrum of efforts to discriminate against women, queer and trans people, people of color, immigrants, and disabled people closely maps onto the patterns of legislative and everyday discrimination established by Southern and Northern politicians alike in their efforts to discriminate against Black people ever since the Civil War. Lack of employment and housing protections (or refusal to defend them), religious freedom bills, and demonizing over-policed, under-funded communities are all strategies taken from the playbook of post-Reconstruction politics. Maybe the reason Donald Trump wants to pretend nobody has studied the Civil War is because his administration knows even a cursory look at history will expose their tricks.

Dismissing queer activism as a demand for “special rights” is not a new idea, and it’s inextricably tied to the history of anti-Black racism and states’ rights initiatives in the United States.

Part of the reason the Trump administration has been able to drive an ongoing preoccupation with “rights” among white, cisgender, heterosexual Americans is because they pull successful 20th-century rhetoric about discrimination and apply it to the present day. Any infringement on privilege is seen as a slight, a loss, a diminishment of selfhood that must be fought by any means. As recently as the 1940s, Dixiecrats (also known as the States’ Rights Democratic Party) espoused the rights of White Americans to choose not to associate with Black people. It’s worth noting that Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is not committed to defending existing LGBT legal protections, and prominent anti-queer activist Anita Bryant were both born and raised in the South at the same time that this states’ rights rhetoric was being deployed to exclude Black Americans from full civil liberties. Dismissing queer activism as a demand for “special rights” is not a new idea, and it’s inextricably tied to the history of anti-Black racism and states’ rights initiatives in the United States.

By proposing to “Make America Great Again” and simultaneously dismissing issues such as abortion access and nondiscrimination legislation as “states’ rights,” the federal government is promoting a return to the locally-ordained discrimination that we’ve seen for generations, newly rebranded as a nationalist, patriotic initiative.

However, it’s the renewed nationalist tone and scope of today’s structural inequality that distinguishes it from the past century or so. The Trump administration is dissolving federal protections and agencies left and right (RIP, EPA). Still, this does not mark a dissolution of power itself, but merely a restructuring that seeks to perpetuate existing norms of inequality for as long as possible. Nationalism and the motto “America First” shore up white supremacy and allow the President to claim massive amounts of executive power without any of the accompanying responsibility to protect vulnerable citizens. By proposing to “Make America Great Again” and simultaneously dismissing issues such as abortion access and nondiscrimination legislation as “states’ rights,” the federal government is promoting a return to the locally-ordained discrimination that we’ve seen for generations, newly rebranded as a nationalist, patriotic initiative. Loyalty to state-level discrimination can now be construed as loyalty to the nation, under the premise that social issues can be best “left to the states.”

This trend towards nationalism, strong presidential leadership, and individualism is not only an American phenomenon, however. President Erdogan’s recent victory in Turkey, the vote for Brexit, and Marine Le Pen’s strong showing in the first round of the French election reveal a strong reactionary tendency among socially conservative voters after years of globalization and liberalization in the United States and Europe. Rather than indicting the cultural and economic exploitation from Western powers that has led to outsourcing, mass immigration, and ongoing police violence, far-right politicians have enjoyed great success by indicting the immigrants, foreign workers, and people of color originally targeted by the states which now seek to further exclude them. By mobilizing the populations whose privileged quality of life is built on the exploitation and exclusion of people of color, disabled people, queer people, and trans people, Trump and other far-right populist movements have re-ignited the rage of a populace that has benefited from this exploitation for countless generations. In a very real way, the gains of queer, trans, POC Americans does threaten the quality of life for people whose sense of selfhood is actually a sense of power and subjugation. When your sense of self is built on your lived experience of privilege, it’s easy to feel like there’s a finite amount of dignity to go around, and Trump and other far-right populists have capitalized on this. In far-right populism, the success of the nation is predicated on its ownership by and operation in service of “us” and not “them,” and this ownership and operation is enforced through a dizzying and often contradictory combination of states’ rights rhetoric and large-scale executive power overreach.

By remanding the majority of civil rights and humanitarian issues to the states, the federal government has effectively absconded any responsibility it previously had to advocate for the people of the United States as a whole.

In an effort to regain the privilege of White Heterosexual America, to bar queer and trans people and people of color from getting any “special rights,” the federal government is casting itself increasingly as an apparatus of law enforcement even as federal regulation and checks and balances shrivel away. Both domestically and internationally, President Trump wants to be the man with the biggest gun, from immigration enforcement, border patrols, and police presence at demonstrations to violent intervention in Syria and other nations. By remanding the majority of civil rights and humanitarian issues to the states, the federal government has effectively absconded any responsibility it previously had to advocate for the people of the United States as a whole. However, it simultaneously takes up the project of policing everybody, U.S. citizen or not. Increasing federal power and decreasing federal responsibility leaves many vulnerable people unsure where to turn.

Access to healthcare is one key issue impacted by changes at the federal level. Without federal funding for and protection of the services provided by Planned Parenthood, from birth control, hormones, and STI screenings to abortion, many queer and trans people will be left without vital healthcare services. If the Affordable Care Act is repealed and decisions about health insurance programs are left to the states, queer and trans Americans will face massive disparities in coverage for mental health care services, gender affirming surgery and hormones, and treatment for chronic illnesses. The federal government’s proposal to improve Americans’ well-being by failing to provide for basic healthcare needs is a dangerous outcome of the intersection between nationalism and states’ rights. At another intersection between federal and local powers, the Justice Department’s ongoing refusal to prosecute police officers who murder Black people perpetuates violent over-policing of Black communities. The militarization of local police forces without sufficient oversight disproportionately impacts Black communities, but all our communities, domestic and international, are endangered by President Trump’s fascination with militarized apparatuses of law enforcement.

We know, of course, that the system of federal protections that we’re losing was already far from perfect. We know because of the corporate and federal violence at Standing Rock, we know because of Black lives lost to police violence, we know because of sexual and gender-based violence condoned by a state that does not believe the voices of women. We know because for all that we wanted a woman president, we were afraid U.S. imperialism would advance under a President Hillary Clinton as well, and that state-sanctioned violence would continue to destabilize and exploit the Middle East and the whole world no matter who we voted for. The federal government’s efforts to take up the burden of advancing civil rights gave us Roe v. Wade, same-sex marriage, and Title IX, but they also failed to address the ongoing epidemic of violence against trans women of color or truly provide healthcare for all people. We need to do better, and maybe our current crisis gives us the opportunity to work within our communities to create systems that actually do the work of reining in corporate greed, saving Black lives, preventing sexual violence. However, our increasingly militarized yet indifferent federal government is challenging for local activism to overcome.

Some state governments, such as California’s, have begun to claim states’ rights rhetoric as a tool for the left. They propose fighting this fight at the state level, supporting sanctuary cities and state-level health care programs and climate regulations. However, it’s hard to know if state-level replacements can really do the work that our communities need to thrive. No amount of clean energy in California is going to help a trans woman who can’t access medical care in Mississippi. Furthermore, it’s hard to confront the vicious cycle of U.S. military intervention abroad from a local level when the federal government claims increasing executive power. We’re left without good answers, but with the conviction that we need to keep a close watch on the actions of the U.S. government, both domestically and abroad. Shocking as the past six months have been, we can empower ourselves to understand the present moment by contextualizing it and unraveling the historical trends that have shaped modern nationalist sentiment. And if the South does rise again, maybe it’ll be radical queers who form a new government this time.

Trump’s “Religious Liberty” Executive Order Doesn’t Explicitly Target Gay People but It’s Still Horrifying

After a delusional introduction by Vice-President Pence — which actually included the words “Our president is a believer. He loves his family and his country. He has an unshakable faith in God and the American people.” — President Trump strode into the White House rose garden this morning and had the audacity to quote Martin Luther King Jr. while preparing to sign his “religious liberty” executive order.

No one has seen the actual text of the EO, but according to officials, the faith leaders who attended the signing this morning were “expecting a broadly worded executive order that would free religious institutions from Obama-era regulations intended to protect gays, lesbians and others from discrimination” but were instead met with promises to “protect religious liberty” by allowing religious healthcare workers/institutions to opt out of providing contraception and other reproductive health services that were mandated by the Affordable Care Act and dial back enforcement of the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits religious institutions with tax-exempt statuses from engaging in political lobbying, including endorsing candidates to their congregations.

As Rachel mentioned yesterday, Trump had planned to roll out this Executive Order in February, but after The Nation obtained a copy, Trump walked it back into the shadows to tweak the language about LGBTQ people.

Nevertheless, GLAAD president Sarah Kate Ellis weighed in immediately after Trump’s speech to remind Americans that Trump’s EO is a slippery slope.

Today's Executive Order stopped short of rampant discrimination but don't be fooled this begins a slippery slope of a #LicenseToDiscriminate

— Sarah Kate Ellis (@sarahkateellis) May 4, 2017

And the ACLU has already promised to take Trump to court (again) over it.

The actions taken today are a broadside to our country’s long-standing commitment to the separation of church and state.

— ACLU (@ACLU) May 4, 2017

When Trump’s first attempt at this EO stalled and he decided not to roll back the Obama administration’s 2014 executive order that prohibits discrimination against LGBT employees of federal contractors, Mike Pence praised his “generous spirit” and said “there’s no room for prejudice” in Trump’s “patriot’s heart.” Which is almost as intellectually dishonest as his introduction in the rose garden this morning. What I wrote at the time is still true:

The truth is that even if Trump never signs a pointedly anti-LGBT executive order into law, LGBTQ people are already being harmed by his xenophobic, Islamophobic and racist administration, because LGBTQ people belong to all of those groups targeted by them. And even if Trump doesn’t personally want to target LGBTQ people, it’s clear that he’s not competent enough to stand in the way of the GOP members who have been working to do so for years in the form of bathroom bills, RFRAs, and more.

Today’s EO isn’t a victory for LGBT people. It’s a strategic move that will empower individual state legislatures to introduce more discriminatory bills without the fear of pushback from the federal government. It’s a signal to the Religious Right that they can continue their oppression propaganda, persisting with the false narrative that they’re under attack for being forced to not discriminate; basking in the privileges white Christians have always enjoyed in the country, while cheering Trump’s mandates for non-Christians to be banned or persecuted. Trump doesn’t want to deal with LGBTQ activists, but he’s happy to legitimize discrimination even if he’s not legalizing it.

Congress Casually Files LGBT Rights Bill; Trump and Pence Pass “Religious Liberty” Executive Order

feature image via shutterstock

We already knew that despite his claims on the campaign trail, Trump is no friend to LGBTQ people. And of course we already know that Mike Pence would just as soon hit us in the face with a sack of Bibles as make eye contact with us. So it’s not a surprise that Trump has passed a new executive order on “religious liberty” — not in the sense of actual religious liberty, but in the vein of the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts that empower people and organizations to deny access and services to LGBT people and others.

During the last 8 years, Americans have been under attack from the federal government for following the tenets of their faiths. pic.twitter.com/1RWEWvmgyT

— The White House 45 Archived (@WhiteHouse45) May 4, 2017

The EO is assumed to be attributable to Mike Pence, an attempt to nationalize the similar religious liberty bill that he signed into law as governor of Indiana.

If reading the headlines on this feels like déjà vu, it’s because there was already one attempt at this bill. Back in February, a draft of a religious EO was leaked to the Nation. The language it included described alarmingly broad “religious exemptions,” and mirrors Pence’s original religious liberty law in Indiana in that it tries to reach beyond what even the many, many other religious liberty laws legislate.

Two years ago, ThinkProgress wrote of Pence’s Indiana bill that “…the bill was written differently from other RFRAs in a way that seems designed to enable discrimination. The bill specifically states that individuals who feel their religion has been burdened can find legal protection in the bill “regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding.” In fact, it is this very exception that makes Indiana’s RFRA, along with those newly proposed in several other states, a significant concern for the LGBT community.”

In February of this year, the Nation wrote of the leaked executive order draft that it “… construes religious organizations so broadly that it covers ‘any organization, including closely held for-profit corporations,’ and protects ‘religious freedom” in every walk of life: “when providing social services, education, or healthcare; earning a living, seeking a job, or employing others; receiving government grants or contracts; or otherwise participating in the marketplace, the public square, or interfacing with Federal, State or local governments.'” In short, both pieces of legislation have an air of Mike Pence about them. They’re intentionally pushing the borders of what “religious freedom” usually entails, broadening the privileges of the Christian right while gutting the rights of the marginalized.

In theory, the February executive order was withdrawn to be rewritten after it was received poorly. In actuality, however, Politico reports that “one influential conservative who saw the text said it hasn’t been dialed back much—if at all—since the February leak. ‘The language is very, very strong,’ the source said.”

Although the text of this draft of the EO hasn’t been released, so we still have no real idea what it actually says, GLAAD has already come out with a statement saying that this EO is “nothing more than a license to discriminate.” The ACLU has indicated that if the EO does constitute a “license to discriminate,” they’ll sue, following the thrust of their lawsuits against the multiple attempts at a Muslim ban.

And if President Trump signs an order that would allow religion to be used as an excuse to discriminate, we will sue. #SeeYouInCourtAgain https://t.co/I9f259RSXP

— ACLU (@ACLU) May 2, 2017

But how will a federal EO that mimics state-level anti-gay RFRAs work, really, especially given the fact that many states have inclusive non-discrimination laws on the books? An executive order isn’t a law, really, but exists in a kind of netherworld between “legislation” and “guideline.” What would happen if a case went to court that pitted it against a nondiscrimination law? Well, 200+ members of Congress want to find out: they filed a bill yesterday to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — the Equality Act. Openly gay legislators Tammy Baldwin and Patrick Maloney were present at the introduction ceremony discussing the bill’s purpose, with Maloney saying “People will still discriminate if it’s illegal. But it should not be legal to discriminate.”

This isn’t the first time a similar attempt has been made; the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, first introduced in 1923, would have ensured “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex,” a clause which some feel would provide some measure of legal protection to LGBT people in the same way that Title IX, which forbids discrimination on the basis of sex, is increasingly being used as a legal argument in defense of trans and gender nonconforming people. Almost 100 years later, the ERA still hasn’t been successfully ratified into the Constitution, although the amendment did see increased interest after Trump’s election and a campaign to revive it.

Passing the Equality Act is going to be a tough sell; the bill has only one Republican supporter, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, who is set to retire soon. It’s by no means a sure or even probable thing. Even if it doesn’t pass into law, however, Trump’s prospective executive order still faces a hairy and confusing future. Language and interpretation of religious liberty laws is often vague, intentionally allowing for generous interpretation by conservative courts; if the unnamed sources on the new draft of the EO are to be believed, the language in this makes even broader room than usual. This means that how the EO actually works in concert with state laws and individual constitutional liberties would be up to states to decide in their court systems, when inevitably lawsuits are filed concerning the conflict of one party’s constitutional rights and another party’s bigotry justified by religion. (The language of these laws is usually restricted to private citizens, meaning that marriage licenses and public accommodations for LGBT people theoretically shouldn’t change — although, as the Nation pointed out in February, the language on the original EO draft was extraordinarily broad.) That setup is a recipe for an ugly patchwork of different state legalities surrounding LGBT people’s basic rights, and eventually a big lawsuit that may make it up to the Supreme Court — one that now has Neil Gorsuch on it.

When Mike Pence signed his Indiana RFRA into law, he had faced such intense opposition to it that he performed the signing in private — no public and no press allowed, only “supportive lawmakers, Franciscan monks and nuns, orthodox Jews, and some of the state’s most powerful lobbyists on conservative social issues.” He knew then, and knows now, that license to discriminate in the name of religion isn’t something America as a whole wants or needs — he’s gone from a closed-door signing ceremony to an executive order that legislators and the public don’t have a chance to weigh in on, without even allowing the language to be publicly available. When he passed the Indiana RFRA in 2015, “so many calls flooded the governor’s office that the phone system was temporarily overwhelmed.”

The Science March Is this Week; Let’s Unite to End Run Trump’s Awful Budget

Header by Rory Midhani
Feature image by shutterstock

This Saturday, thousands of scientists and science-supporters are expected to join the March for Science, a group calling for “science that upholds the common good” and evidence-based policy making. Following several frustrating weeks of public back-and-forth over science’s inherently political nature, organizers released a revised set of diversity principles on March 9 — which, I’m happy to report, are thoughtful, feminist and intersectional. Let’s all hope those nice words are followed through with actions, because we need a diverse and inclusive scientific community working together now more than ever.

As of today, the US government has no budget past April 28th. Congress is in a two week recess, and when it reconvenes in the final week of April, there will only be four legislative days left with both chambers in session to get a catchall spending bill introduced and enacted before the stopgap measure expires and an automatic shutdown kicks in. This is because the government is currently being funded by a continuing resolution passed in December 2016, as the actual FY17 budget was held hostage as Republicans tried to use it as a vehicle to repeal the ACA! On March 16, President Trump proposed a blueprint “skinny budget” focusing on cuts to a small slice of discretionary spending for FY18, with final details of the plan promised in May… but even if that passes, it wouldn’t go into effect until October, unless Congress magically agrees on something super quick and also resolves to make similar appropriations for the rest of this year. So, lots of uncertainty and mixed deadlines, zero satisfied parties right now. We don’t know what sort of budget is going to emerge from this chaotic process (probably not a good one?), but if Trump has his way, it will be very, very bad for science.

One thing to keep in mind: President Trump does not actually set the budget. He submits a request, but it’s up to members of Congress to fill in the actual details with appropriations bills, which may or may not follow the president’s agenda. Historically, we do typically see the president exerting influence over the budget, but the extent to which they’re able to do so depends on their approval ratings, party relations and other political factors. Trump’s budget almost certainly will not pass as-is, but it does set the agenda and indicate issues Republicans are likely to prioritize during negotiations, so it’s worth paying some attention to.

Anyway, as many expected/feared, baby’s first budget proposal is historically anti-science. Under Trump’s plan, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science would lose $900 million, nearly 20% of its $5 billion budget. Funding for the National Institutes of Health, the primary funder of biomedical research in the US, would be cut by a disastrous 18.3%. (Thankfully, this idea has not been well received by GOP members.) And the National Science Foundation, which supports fundamental research across almost all science and engineering fields, somehow wasn’t even listed in the 62-page document (?!). This could mean that Trump wants to eliminate the agency; it could also mean that it’s included in the “other agencies” proposed to receive a 10% cut, or that he just forgot about it. Only time will tell.

Numerous actions are already underway to appeal to Congress’ better nature to protect science funding. (March 21: a Congressional subcommittee hearing on “Future Opportunities and Challenges for Science,” with brilliant testimonies by Acting Chief Operating Officer of the National Science Foundation Dr. Joan Ferrini-Mundy, and Chair of the National Science Board Maria T. Zuber. March 23: a strategic op-ed about the importance of science funding in Foreign Affairs magazine. April 6: 285 universities, science societies, research organizations and industry groups to send a letter to the House and Senate leadership.) This is all very good and encouraging! We have a lot of fire fighting to do in the short term, and I’m hopeful our country’s greatest minds will be able to make some headway as we enter (or continue to wander around in?) this dark period known as “appropriations.” 

Longer term, one thing I would love to see coming out of the March for Science is a strategic look at how we can protect funding for scientific research beyond the next budget cycle. Not everyone is aware of the history, but this bear of a funding system we labor under is a relatively new arrangement. Prior to World War II, government money for research was rare, with funding instead coming from universities, philanthropists and local industry. This began to change in 1939, when a group of scientists approached President Roosevelt with a proposal for a pre-war “technological preparedness” program. After getting the okay from FDR, they formed the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), or what is now known as the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). The operation was headed by MIT engineer Vannevar Bush (no relation to the Georges). By the conclusion of WWII, OSRD’s 19 divisions, five committees and two panels had successfully developed advanced electronics, radar, Napalm, cures for malaria, the atomic bomb, and more. It permanently changed government’s relationship with science in this country, and participants on both sides worked to prolong the profitable arrangement.

Most notably, FDR wrote Bush a letter in late 1944, asking: “What can the government do now and in the future to aid research activities by public and private organizations?” Bush replied in an essay titled Science, The Endless Frontier:  

“The simplest and most effective way in which the Government can strengthen industrial research is to support basic research and to develop scientific talent.” 

Specifically, Bush proposed that the government create a permanent science advisory board to award competitive public grants for civilian research projects. Of the five guiding principles Bush suggested, Congress adopted four with the 1950 creation of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The remaining principle — “stability of funds over a period of years so that long-range programs may be undertaken” with funding commitments from current appropriations for programs five years in duration or longer — was not built in to the plan. Rather, it was left to the whims of each year’s budget cycle to determine how much money would be set aside to support scientific research. Usually, this works out okay; other times, we have a faltering pattern of hops and dips, or (most recently) scientists bracing for a lost generation in American research.

According to the March For Science “principles and goals” page, one of their objectives is funding for scientific research and its applications; another, to humanize science. I hope they are wildly successful on both fronts! Because, as a reminder: President Trump doesn’t set the budget. Congress does, and all 435 seats in the House and 34 out of 100 seats in the Senate will be up for midterm elections next year. Let’s hope they’re paying attention this Saturday.

Notes From A Queer Engineer is a recurring column with an expected periodicity of 14 days. The subject matter may not be explicitly queer, but the industrial engineer writing it sure is. This is a peek at the notes she’s been doodling in the margins.

PHOTOESSAY: The April 15 Tax March

Donald Trump should show us his taxes.

Why do I care?

As someone who just actually learned how to pay my taxes this year (and registered myself as an employer, woo), I can say that I am officially accountable to myself as well as the government. I expect the President to have the same accountability to the people.

It’s about more than taxes; it’s about transparency, and a knowledge of where our leaders have assets and where and how they are generating income. Why do we care about that? Because we deserve to know how decisions from diplomacy to pipelines to prisons to the catering company for a political brunch are personally benefiting our leaders.

If you’ve been following any news, you also know that these taxes may also hold the keys to innumerable secrets and probable illegal dealings or tax fraud. Why else hide them? If he didn’t want to be held to this high a standard of accountability, maybe he shouldn’t have run for public office.

PLAYLIST: Guy in a “Make America Great Again” Hat

It’s spring time, and you know what that means! More people. Standing near more people in public. Coexisting with large swaths of people. Your general area, more crowded. But in the sun!!! Maybe you’re going to a concert (aw!) or you’re waiting for your table at brunch (ugh!) or you’re trying to get in a bar after some sports game has let out and you keep hearing the bouncer vary his answer from five to ten dollars whenever someone asks how much based in your mind on no discernible criteria and so you call him on it when it’s your turn to get in and he doesn’t like your suggestion that you should get in free on account of all the money he’s made up-selling patrons and he tells you to go and you know you don’t have it in you to even attempt to flirt and so you find yourself standing near an entirely new group of people just down the street.

What you do in these moments, standing with your peers, is who you are. Your idling style is more telling than any answer a dating app question could elicit from you. Before getting into a relationship with someone you should get to see a two minute video of the person waiting for something while in the middle a large group of people. What’s their truth? Do they survey those around them? Anchor down on their crew or person?

Or do they hold court like that guy in the MAGA hat.

This is the most recent incarnation of white guy with a dumb hat who has something to say in a long standing history of white guys with dumb hats who have something to say, but if you haven’t had this particular pleasure yet, I’ve made a playlist honoring this experience. It’s filled with hit after hit. And between the kind of policy making that’s forcing a societal hand to double down on a literal time bomb, this is liable to be the playlist of the summer!

We’ll Have Sex Again, I Promise

On the way into the deli, Stacy reached down to hold my hand and asked if I’d order her sandwich for her. On the way out of the deli, I reached down to hold Stacy’s hand and said, “We’ll have sex again, I promise.” It wasn’t the first time we’ve had either of those conversations. They always give her the wrong mustard and leave the pickles off her sandwich, and I haven’t wanted to have sex since — well, it’s been a while.

The joke was that we had to have sex before the election, because if Donald Trump won, I never wanted to be touched again. It was a joke. A joke. Because obviously Donald Trump was not going to win the election and on the very slim chance he did win (which he wasn’t going to do), it’s not like it would destroy my sex drive. And anyway, Hillary Clinton was going to be president. No doubt about it. A woman in the White House! The lead-up-to-election sex we had was euphoric. We were both giddy with hope because the world was about to be a whole new place where a woman who spent her entire adult life being demonized by the Right could follow the legacy of a black man who spent his entire presidency being demonized by the Right, after campaigning on the most liberal platform in history and embracing every kind of diversity.

I was wrong about what was a joke, and wrong about this also: I did need to be touched after the election.

I needed Stacy to stand beside me and hold my hand while I had another of what was becoming a series of pelvic exams. It was just some pain and symptoms that were supposed to add up to a specific diagnosis, but my uterus was swollen and my doctor needed to look at it again. I needed an abdominal ultrasound. I needed a transvaginal ultrasound. I needed another one. I needed a gynecological specialist. While I was at the imaging center, my doctor figured I should go ahead and get a mammogram. I’m 38. My mom had breast cancer when she was my age. My mammogram was suspicious. I needed a second one. And an ultrasound. A biopsy. An MRI.

My brain is a series of ceaseless numbers: 60 days since Donald Trump took office. Two days until my primary care physician hears back from my insurance. Four days until my biopsy. 24 hours until Congress votes on whether or not I’ll have healthcare next year. One week until my appointment at the imaging center. Ten days until my 30-minute appointment with the head of gynecology at Mt. Sinai. $100 copay. $1,000 deductible. 120 days since we’ve had sex.

The first time Stacy and I had sex it was different. I was afraid and I was shivering. I tried to play it off like I was cold, that my arms were tired. We both knew I was lying. I’d already lived ten lesbian lives by the time Stacy and I met. First love, toxic love, the illicit affair, the convincing myself a straight girl loved me back. I’d done the thing where I had sex with whoever I wanted wherever I wanted. In the park, in the car, on a hike, at the beach, in the dressing room, her house, my house, our friends’ house. Those times, I didn’t care what came after the sex. I didn’t want to go for pancakes, I didn’t want to watch TV, I didn’t want to shower together or take a walk or hang out and go out that night. It was fun. I had fun. (I really did!) I just wanted to go home to my books and my writing and my pets and the quiet.

It drove me crazy how much I cared what Stacy thought. Not just about me, but about TV and movies and music and biographies and fantasy novels and philosophy and queer stuff and politics and religion. And I guess I cared extra hard what she thought about having sex with me too because, for the first time ever, I wanted to ask someone to stay after and talk. She told me about the planets and the stars. I told her about the Oxford comma. Long baths, late nights. We kept talking and having sex until we were waking up and going to sleep doing both of those things in the same city, the same house, the same bed; promising to do them forever.

We used to cry when we talked about sex, one of us at least, every time. Because the way you feel about the sex you’re having and the sex you’re not having is a story you’re telling yourself about yourself and about your relationship and about every comforting and insecure thought you’ve ever had about both of those things. You’re wanted, so you’re beautiful; you’re desired, so you’re worthy. Not just of sex, but of love maybe. Of commitment. She could be having sex with anybody, but she’s having sex with you. She chose you. Or the opposite thing. It’s because you’ve gained weight. It’s because you’ve been depressed. It’s because she’s into something or someone else. There’s something wrong with you, as you always suspected.

But now there is something wrong with me, with my brain. I can’t bounce back from the election. I want to think of it as just politics, but it was more than that to me. It was my life’s purpose facing off against a culture that has destroyed so many of the people and things I have loved. Equality, empathy, and a promise to grapple with our own contributions to the darkness facing off against ingrained prejudice, ignorance, and backwards thinking. A prepared, capable, flawed woman promising to do good facing off against the bigoted bombast of a man promising to do harm.

There’s something wrong with my body, too. No one knows what yet. More probes are needed. More bloodwork. More images. More insurance approval, more appointments, more bills, more tests, more questions.

Stacy slipped her hand under the back of my t-shirt while we were watching basketball this week and gently traced her fingers up my spine. I shivered and let out a little purr that surprised us both. It’s not just the sex. I’m having a hard time being touched at all these days. I keep imagining myself with a robot body and my brain is inside it. I have work left to do, contributions to make to this world, but my body is a constant source of pain and anxiety. I try to forget it exists and just work; when Stacy touches me, I remember. And because she’s Stacy, I remember there’s a heart in there too. Bruised, exhausted, overflowing.

“Have you been thinking about having sex at all lately?”

I dropped my head and started to stutter out something guilty. I can’t think about sex because I can’t think about my breasts because I can’t think about the unidentified mass inside there. I can’t think about sex because I can’t think about my vagina because I can’t think about the pain and the uterus biopsy that’s coming. She kept her one hand under my t-shirt and reached for my chin. “Hey,” she said. “Hey, look at me. You’re okay. We’re okay. There are other ways to be close.”

She’s right. The closest I ever felt to her wasn’t when we were having sex. It was two months ago when she was standing beside me in that doctor’s office while I scooted down into the stirrups and prepared for a test that had sent me spiraling into a panic attack earlier in the week. The doctor tried small talk that was only making me more nervous, so Stacy smiled at me and said, “We rescued and adopted some feral kittens, Dr. Cox. Did Heather tell you?”

The doctor said no, I had not, but she’d love to hear about it.

“Well, they came into our backyard — how long ago, Heather?”

“Two summers,” I said.

“Two summers,” Stacy repeated. “Three black ones and two grey tiger-looking ones.”

“Their mom is a black tuxedo.”

“A black tuxedo. Her name is Bobbi Jean.”

The doctor said, “Just a few more minutes. You’re doing great.”

I was covered in sweat when the test was done, but I hadn’t hyperventilated. I hadn’t panicked. I didn’t realize Stacy had reached for my hand until it was over and she was still holding it. We went to brunch at a diner near the hospital. It looked like a cruise ship inside and Stacy ordered a drink that should have come with an umbrella. I didn’t want to talk and she didn’t try make me. She winked at me. She sipped her weird fruity Carnival cocktail.

We’re always filling in other people’s silences, the gaps in our story, with our own insecurities and hopes and fears and dreams and heartache. With the messages we’ve internalized from TV and movies. With the words we’ve heard from our churches and our politicians. We assign malevolent motive where there’s nothing but love. We castigate ourselves for offenses no one else thinks we committed. We do it with sex most of all.

Stacy has refused to fill in the gaps of our sex life with any story other than the truth: I’m sad and I’m scared.

We’ll survive Donald Trump and be better activists and humans on the other side of it. I’ll finally get a diagnosis with what’s going on with me and begin a course of treatment to fix it. I’ll reach for her hand. She’ll reach for mine. We’ll have sex again.

Stacy will have the Yankee chicken cutlet on a roll, no bacon, light deli mustard instead of honey mustard, add pickles.

Trump Rescinds Obama Executive Order on LGBT Federal Employees, Just Like He Promised Not To

In addition to erasing LGBTQ people from the US census, Trump has revoked an executive order that required federal contractors document their compliance with laws and executive orders, including their compliance with the prohibition on discrimination against LGBT employees. To be clear, the EO that Trump has rescinded isn’t the same one that actually prohibits LGBT discrimination in the workplace at those federal contractors, but without a system of accountability and documentation in place it will be difficult to prove that’s happening at all and thus make the law enforceable. Doing so would depend upon individual employees filing a lawsuit against their employer, an expensive and time-consuming process that isn’t feasible for many.

The issue of discrimination against LGBT employees by federal contractors was actually one that Trump’s team had specifically said they would leave alone, back in January:

“President Donald J. Trump is determined to protect the rights of all Americans, including the LGBTQ community,” the White House said in a statement. “The executive order signed in 2014, which protects employees from anti-LGBTQ workplace discrimination while working for federal contractors, will remain intact.”

Although the original nondiscrimination EO is still in place, these actions certainly don’t constitute protection of the LGBTQ community; nor are they those of, as the Log Cabin Republicans called him at the time the statement was made, a “real friend.”

So why go back on his word, such as it is, for an EO about internal documentation? Well, there are a few possibilities, none of which may be true or all of them, and we’ll probably never really know. Realistically, it’s totally possible Trump himself doesn’t know why he signed this specific EO. It’s always a coin toss with this administration regarding whether something happened out of intentional malice or just total incompetence. Maybe his tee time got changed and he had to take his frustration out somewhere. More probably, though: it could be that Pence or Ryan want to get more aggressive about rolling back LGBTQ civil rights, and had him do this as a litmus test to see how much outcry there would be. It’s possible that this is part of Bannon’s documented campaign to stop “paper trails” inside the federal government entirely:

“He is running a cabal, almost like a shadow NSC,” the official said. He described a work environment where there is little appetite for dissenting opinions, shockingly no paper trail of what’s being discussed and agreed upon at meetings, and no guidance or encouragement so far from above about how the National Security Council staff should be organized… During the first week of the Trump administration, there were no SOCs [summary of conclusions], the intelligence official said. In fact, according to him, there is surprisingly very little paper being generated, and whatever paper there is, the NSC staff is not privy to it. He sees this as a deterioration of transparency and accountability.

A government whose decisions aren’t even entered into a the record is a government whose decisions are harder to fight; it’s difficult to combat something that can’t even be proven to exist.

It’s also possible that Trump or his team think that this falls under the umbrella of “cutting back regulations,” a GOP rallying cry without any particular substance that has led to developments like Trump’s earlier, shockingly stupid executive order to “scrap two regulations for every new one adopted.”

Regardless of the reason, at least one thing is clear: no matter what he claimed on the campaign trail or in puff piece interviews, and no matter what he had some staffer backstage scrawl onto a flag with Magic Marker, Trump is not and never will be an ally to LGBT people. We already knew this, and we already knew what to do: push back against him and his administration at every turn. Regardless of this move and all the other anti-LGBT developments that are inevitably coming down the pipeline, our mandate to uplift and protect our own community while opposing him resolutely remains the same.

Trump Accidentally Recharged the Fight to Finally Ratify the Equal Rights Amendment

The sexist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic and ableist rhetoric that has come to define the Trump administration has reignited the movement behind the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which was first introduced in 1923, but stalled in 1982 and currently remains three states away from ratification. Led by Lina Esco, founder of the Free the Nipple movement, The Human Campaign has launched a rigorous 24-month campaign to pass the amendment, soliciting help from Washington lobbyists and celebrities, and promising disruptive protests to gain public attention and support. However, nearly 100 years after its first authoring, it’s unclear whether the ERA in its current form truly supports equal rights for all gender identities.

Surprisingly, the ERA had the support of both political parties when it was first introduced to Congress in 1923 by suffragist and women’s rights activist Alice Paul. The original language of the amendment was that “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction,” but Paul rewrote the ERA in 1943 to say “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” It was this version that was eventually passed the U.S. Senate and then the House of Representatives, and on March 22, 1972, was sent to the states for ratification. By 1977, the amendment had received 35 of the necessary 38 state ratifications. In 1978, a joint resolution of Congress extended the ratification deadline to June 30, 1982.

Jimmy Carter signs extension for Equal Rights Amendment ratification

Conservative Republican activist Phyllis Schlafly led the charge against the ERA, arguing for traditional gender roles and alleging that the amendment would repeal protective laws such as alimony and make it difficult for mothers to obtain custody of their children in divorce cases. Schlafly, and others who opposed the ERA, claimed that single-sex bathrooms would be eliminated and that women would be required to enlist in the draft. Their propaganda worked, and in 1980 the Republican party removed support for the ERA from their platform.

After the extended 1982 deadline came and went, the fight to add the ERA as the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was delayed indefinitely, though it’s been introduced before every session of Congress since. Esco began her campaign to get the ERA ratified during the Obama administration, but found little support on Capitol Hill. It was the election of Donald Trump that lit a new fire under activists’ asses, and in an interview with Mic, Esco said, “Everybody was in survival mode, like, ‘What can I do?’ Everybody was on edge. So there’s no better time to try to get the Equal Rights Amendment in the Constitution than right now.”

Perhaps it was that frustration that led Nevada’s democratic-controlled State Senate to finally pass the ERA on Wednesday, March 15. The amendment is expected to pass through the State Assembly as well, which will make Nevada the 36th state to ratify. However, Democrats and Republicans alike still question the efficacy of the amendment and argue that the same protections are currently offered under the 14th Amendment. Ironically enough, late Associate Justice Antonin Scalia disagreed with that argument, once stating that “The Constitution does not protect women from sexual discrimination. No one ever thought that’s what it meant. No one ever voted for that.”

While we’re on the topic of the Supreme Court, it’s important to consider the consequences of putting gender equality issues in the hands of nine Supreme Court Justices, particularly under a Trump presidency. There’s also the issue of the ERA’s long expired deadline, which conservatives will no doubt argue makes the amendment invalid. The “Madison Amendment,” which became the 27th amendment in 1992, 203 years after it was first introduced, offers some hope that Congress has the power to uphold the ERA should it meet the 38 state qualification.

The Human Campaign’s 24-month crusade is ambitious, but if feminist activists continue stepping up, it just might work. Millions of people around the world participated in the Women’s March on the day after Trump’s inauguration, and on March 8th rallies erupted across the country for International Women’s Day. With public engagement reaching an all-time high, it’s likely that progressives will put their weight behind the ERA and push the remaining states to ratify. The ERA has the potential to address issues such as disparities in pay, sex discrimination cases, sexual assault, unequal access to health care, poverty, and paid maternity leave, but it remains to be seen whether it will go far enough to secure equality for all.

The language on The Human Campaign’s website speaks only of recognizing women and men as equals and does not mention how trans and gender nonconforming people will be supported by the amendment. It vaguely mentions partnerships with “gender equality” (quotes are theirs, not mine) organizations, but doesn’t provide additional information. Given the escalating violence against trans communities and the fact that the Trump administration has already rescinded Obama’s protections for trans students in public schools, the oversight is impossible to ignore. It makes one wonder whether The Human Campaign’s organizers purposefully included binary language in order to speed their movement along and garner more widespread support.

For now, the answer is: we’ll see. We’ll see whether Nevada becomes the 36th state to ratify the ERA. We’ll see how The Human Campaign unfolds and who their “gender equality” partners turn out to be. We’ll see how the public responds to this movement and whether they demand the amendment be changed to reflect our expanded views on gender.

The renewed fight behind the ERA stems from an admirable intention, but as we all know, impact outweighs intention, and it’s still unclear what the impact will be.

Rachel Maddow Proves, Once Again, That America Prefers Asinine Bluster Over Brilliant Women

One of the most demoralizing things about the 2016 presidential election was the perpetual, year-long reminder that a brilliant, accomplished woman giving nuanced explanations about complicated issues can’t hold America’s (or the media’s) attention the way a braggadocious, simple-minded man can with 140 characters. We don’t want context, history, expertise; we want a Hunger Games-style bloodbath we can understand and react to in a single tweet. Sad! Bad! Mad! And we proved it again on Tuesday night when Rachel Maddow accomplished something no journalist on earth had previously been able to do: She revealed a Trump tax return, a two-page 1040 from 2005.

She did it the Maddow way, by pulling on a bunch of strings — here’s evidence a Russian operative dumped money into Trump’s lap, here’s evidence that same Russian operative is meeting with a top GOP fundraiser, here’s evidence Trump and his family are beholden to other foreign governments, here’s what having his tax returns would actually show us, here’s a reminder Trump’s refusal to release his returns is not normal, here’s a weird peripheral tie-in that made me laugh — before handing over a bouquet of balloons to her viewers. This is her enduring style. Her 2012 book Drift, which explores the growing power of the executive branch through the unmooring of the American military, begins with an eight-page prologue about the “Andy Griffith-esque” public safety complex in her tiny Hampshire County, MA town. Before she tells you her conclusion, she tells you why her conclusion should matter to you. It’s her entire brand.

So why is the internet eviscerating her today? Why are dozens of reporters and websites and hundreds of thousands of (left and right wing) commenters and tweeters piling on her? Because in the hour between her tweet promising a Trump tax return and her reveal of said tax return, the media and the masses whipped themselves up into a feeding frenzy. They wanted the Trump killshot she had never promised and when, instead, Maddow delivered a body blow — like the hundreds of body blows Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein delivered to the Nixon Administration leading up to his impeachment over Watergate — they turned on her.

The issue is, in part, the circus into which our political and reporting process has devolved. And the fact that what sticks is what’s retweetable. But there’s no way to look at this backlash without seeing blatant sexism and homophobia.

Almost as soon as Maddow’s tweet landed, people began to question how big her scoop could be, really, if NBC News proper wasn’t breaking the story. The implication being, of course, that Brian Williams should deliver the message to the American people if it was important. After all, despite Maddow consistently being NBC’s most watched reporter, despite the fact that she’s never suffered a journalism disgrace, despite the fact that she is the go-to liberal political voice in this country, she had to share the anchor seat during the 2016 election with Williams, an optic that became a metaphor for the election: America would rather trust a white guy with a bombshell scandal under his belt than the smartest woman in the room.

It’s also hard to find a social media stream or comment section that isn’t deriding Maddow for being a masculine-of-center lesbian as much as her method of reporting. That’s nothing new. Every time Maddow makes headlines outside of liberal circles, the homophobia hurled at her is relentless. For example, enjoy these comments from a Mediaite post about Maddow calling out Trump for “blatantly, overtly, bluntly, simply” lying about Russia.

You’ll find similar sentiments in nearly every comment section on the internet today — left, right, center, and especially Twitter.

Rachel Maddow didn’t take a torch to the White House last night and oust Donald Trump from the West Wing with her bare hands, but here’s what she did accomplish: She proved it is possible to get Donald Trump’s tax returns. She proved the White House does, in fact, have Trump’s returns handy and that they’re perfectly capable of handing them over; they demonstrated it by releasing a statement with exact numbers not long after Maddow’s tweet. By making those numbers public, the White House shattered the lie that Trump cannot release his returns until his “audit” is complete. She proved it’s not just journalists who care about Trump’s returns, which has been the post-campaign refrain of every White House spokesperson. And she shined a glaring light on the fact that Trump is trying to push through “tax reform” — specifically, getting rid of the Alternative Minimum Tax — that provides no relief to the poor and middle class but allows him to pay an income tax rate of around 4%. Four percent, y’all. Americans who make less than $18,500 a year pay ten percent.

Maddow also no doubt contributed to the culture of paranoia that has gripped the Trump administration and continues to cause chaos in the White House. Just today, in fact, Politico released a report citing senior officials who said the “degree of suspicion” cultivated by media leaks has “created a [West Wing] toxicity that is unsustainable.” It was this paranoia and suspicion Maddow purposefully stoked in her opening last night. After explaining in detail why it is imperative to see Trump’s returns, she made pointed hand gestures while staring straight through the camera and saying, “That’s why there will be unrelenting pressure to find Donald Trump’s tax returns, to expose Donald Trump’s tax returns, and that pressure will remain every single day he remains president. Unless and until he releases them, the pressure will never let up.”

Last night, Rachel Maddow proved what she set out to prove, and, in the process, she laid bare another reminder that America prefers asinine bluster over brilliant women.

Persecuting Trans Women: Finally a Thing Breitbart and The Religious Right Can Agree On

Feature image via Shutterstock

Everyone who was paying attention knew it was coming: The Trump administration was always going to go after trans people. His team of soulless, scapegoating, power-grabbing bigots was always going to roll back the basic civil rights trans people finally won under President Obama and wink at state legislatures to go as hard as they want against trans people, economic and social repercussions — like the ones faced by North Carolina after passing HB2 — be damned. And yesterday we saw one of their first moves. In a joint letter, the Justice Department and Education Department rejected the Obama Administration’s position that a trans student’s right to use public facilities that align with their gender identity is protected by Title IX.

Rather than offering new guidelines for how public schools should make sure transgender students are not discriminated against, the Trump administration simply indicated that protecting trans students is now a state’s rights issue and — despite some level of pressure from Betsy DeVos, weirdly enough — reminded schools that the federal government’s decision to feed vulnerable trans kids to the Republican wolves doesn’t “diminish the protections from bullying and harassment that are available to all students” who should be “able to learn in a safe environment.”

You’ll love the rationale for the decision: too much litigation. The Trump Administration didn’t like all the suing that was happening by kids whose rights were being violated, so they just went ahead and tried to take away those rights to stop the lawsuits. This from a man who tweeted “SEE YOU IN COURT” moments after his Muslim Ban was smacked down by the 9th Circuit.

Despite the apparent infighting between DeVos and Jeff Sessions on the issue, the decision to target trans people was an easy political choice for Trump as it’s one of the only things that naturally marries his “alt-right Breitbart” supporters and white evangelical Christians still claiming a moral high ground by clinging to the GOP. Good ol’ Milo Yiannopoulos led his toxic band of Gamergaters and Men’s Rights Activists on a crusade against trans people, starting by heralding the (failed, but now infamous) “Drop the T from LGBT” campaign with a post on Breitbart that attacked trans women and trans activists with every kind of slur and logical fallacy a person could fit into a 3,000-word screed. Matthew Hopkins, one of the main harassers behind GamerGate joined Milo’s rallying cry and called destroying trans rights “one of the most politically important campaigns of our generation.”

As for the Christian conservatives, they got their marching orders (as they always do) from the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBT lobbying group that uses junk science and cherry picked stats from dubiously conducted studies to misinform pastors at a grassroots level and empower legislators at a state level to target LGBT people. The FRC is a moneymaking machine that has lobbied for conversion therapy and against marriage equality and ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In 2015, the FRC released a 45-page document called “Understanding and Responding to the Transgender Movement.” It’s full of misinformation and propaganda, and it’s on the back of this “research” that legislators across the country began rolling out bills that prevent trans people from using the correct bathroom, deny incarcerated trans people access to necessary healthcare, and even prevent trans people from gaining access to their vital records.

The modern Republican party has always needed at least one minority group to scapegoat. Without the ability to create propaganda against a dangerous “other” that is out to destroy families, their power is diminished. Few voters will bypass their own fears and stoked prejudices to examine the actual policies (tax cuts and deregulation, hey!) of the GOP. It seems that even Trump and his cronies have recognized that well-funded, well-organized, politically victorious gay rights activists aren’t the minority they want to tangle with, so instead they want to divide and disorder the LGBT community: you’ve got Milo over here trying to isolate the T from LGBT and the Moral Majority over there waiting to pounce.

As Polly Anna Rocha pointed out yesterday, these decisions by Trump’s administration and state legislators specifically target trans women: “We are the ones that conservatives are daring to call men in dresses, we’re the ones that have to face direct physical and systemic violence for living publicly in spite of misconceptions, and yet we’re the ones they claim are out to molest and assault unsuspecting (cisgender) women and children, despite there being zero evidence to back this up.”

Now here’s the ultimate irony: There is no evidence that trans women are likely to be predators. None. However, Breitbart golden boy Milo, Mr. Take the T out of LGBT, just resigned from Breitbart, lost his book deal from Simon and Schuster, and was dropped from the Conservative Political Action Conference after a five-minute video surfaced of him defending “13 year olds” having sex with “older men.” And how about the former executive director of the Family Research Council’s PAC? That’s right: It was Josh Duggar, the man who molested four of his sisters and one of their babysitters. Not only do these people know that trans women don’t pose any threat to cis women, children, or anyone else, but they’re banking on the demonization of trans women to give them and men like them more leeway to do that exact thing.

(Add this to the fact that these men don’t believe in rape, blame victims of rape more often than not, and care nothing for treating rape victims, and the moral bankruptcy is complete.)

The Trump Administration’s decision to go after trans people is a happy marriage of policy ideas shaped and espoused by Milo and Duggar. It makes Breitbarters happy. It makes Baptists happy. It makes the lives of trans women and trans kids infinitely more dangerous and terrifying. And it doesn’t do a damn thing to protect anyone besides the men who have proven themselves apologists and perpetrators of sexual assault against children, the very crime they claim to want to keep trans women from committing.

There Are Too Many Websites: More Internet Haikus

^{feature image via shutterstock}

can someone please ask
how trump defines the onion
just make him say it

net neutrality?
*bronzes everywhere but eyes*
never heard of her

people boycottin’
but then there go amazon
and they’re like… jk

fav meme atm?
#impeachmentparty
thank you for asking

moment of silence
for the left swipes made too soon
hardly knew ye girl

damn astro poets
can a pisces live or no
in my feel– oh wait

news cycle word trends
don’t exactly convince me
anyone’s in charge

want a google search?
bookmark “ping pong saradon”
it’s my gift to you

repeating “fake news”
is trump’s own “cash me ousside”
the hoes are laughing

away messages
what i’d give to be back there
nestled in their necks

sometimes the best neg
is a spam folder filter
*winks at computer*

please no one copy
that snapchat screenshot feature
livelihood’s at stake

current twitter vibes
are “fire alarm while at school”
like do we joke or…

think we can call it
there are too many websites
also bands please stop

i may be single
but i got a valentine
from credit karma

the real Y2K
clocks resetting, wall street down
is betty white’s death

with the internet
you don’t have to leave your house
to make bad choices

hope what survives us
the only thing that survives
are stock images

they’ll look back and go
“they were an ordered people”
“dead around the eyes”

Clinging to Naomi: Reclaiming My Faith as Republicans Continue to Weaponize Christianity

Feature image via Shutterstock

The day after President Trump signed the executive order that targets and attempts to bar U.S. entrance to Muslims from seven Middle Eastern and North African countries, I taught the story of Ruth to my 7th grade Sunday School class. In the story, Ruth’s husband dies, and rather than stay in her homeland she follows her mother-in-law Naomi back to Judah and becomes a foreigner, an immigrant, an outsider.

I planned the lesson as news of airport detentions came across my social media feeds. Call it destiny or irony, but I appreciated the opportunity to teach a lesson about an immigrant who forms part of the ancestral line of Jesus of Nazareth to a group of 12-year-olds while a runaway president literally kept families apart.

@wadetheory at the #nobannowall protest at LAX.

A photo posted by Autostraddle (@autostraddle) on Jan 29, 2017 at 12:06pm PST

During our weekly check-in to start off the class, my students asked questions about the immigration order. They wanted to understand what was happening at D/FW airport and why. I did my best to explain, trying to find simple words that would clarify the xenophobic executive order and provide some insight into what the crisis meant for us as Christians. In the end, Ruth did the heavy lifting for me.

The word in the original Hebrew that is used to describe Ruth’s attachment to Naomi translates roughly to clave or clung, as in “Ruth clung to her.” The original text uses that same word to describe the attachment between Adam and Eve. For that reason, along with other subtext, some scholars interpret the story of Ruth and Naomi as a queer story.

Ruth’s speech to Naomi when she refuses to stay in Moab (“Where you go I will go, and your people will be my people, and your God will be my God”) is used frequently in weddings, straight and gay alike. Even if they were not lovers, I think the word queer is big enough to encompass the love between two women who became a family that no borders, financial circumstances, or social norms could separate. Once they arrived in Judah, strangers showed Ruth incredible kindness, giving her access to food and security for herself and Naomi. Eventually she married Boaz, a landowner, defying one more social convention as an Israelite brought her into the family lineage.

This story about two women who risked so much is situated in the Old Testament, smack in the middle of a whole bunch of really violent stories, but I never knew a vengeful God. I read about God’s wrath in the story of Noah and understood that God blessed Samson with the strength to kill an army with a donkey’s jawbone. I memorized those stories, but I never felt any kind of relationship with that God. It was always the Beatitudes, the parables about the relationship between God and the poor, and the quietest Psalms that made me seek the Holy Spirit’s movement in my life.

The theological commentaries of racists, the “statements of welcome” from conversion therapy advocates, and the sermons of Prosperity Gospel pastors have always struck me as ironic and ugly, profoundly disconnected from anything I felt as faith.

Yet here we are: In 2017, the presidency of Donald Trump — and the vice presidency of Mike Pence — has validated the fantasies of the Evangelical right and installed fundamentalist Christians into crucial federal offices. The Christians currently most empowered are a byproduct of the Moral Majority, an organization founded by Jerry Falwell Sr. in 1979 to form politically beneficial relationships between conservative Christians and the Republican Party. The Moral Majority began in the South in the same fertile soil that made Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy so successful in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Appealing to racial resentment during the height of the Civil Rights era, the Republican party “became vehicle of white supremacy in the South” and under the leadership of Falwell and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, that racism became inextricably tied with the Southern Baptist church (and other similar white Evangelical Christian churches). It was always only a short step from scapegoating Black people to scapegoating Muslims, Latinx immigrants, gay people, and trans people.

Trump cheesing aggressively with Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife, Becki. Jerry is one of THOSE Falwells, president of Liberty University, and now the leader of a task force on higher education.

I have written about my faith a couple of times on Autostraddle, but I’ve always shied away from making too much of a fuss about it. I understand that so many people in our gorgeous queer community have experienced profound harm at the hands of churches. Being a Christian positions me within a privileged majority, even if many of my fellow Christians don’t believe I belong there. I didn’t want to get my Jesus feelings all over everybody’s political education and vapid fluff.

Times change. Right-wing Christians have weaponized theology against queer and trans people — and just about everyone who doesn’t experience the world exactly as they do. As they breathe more fire into our public discourse and gain more power in our federal government, as Religious Freedom acts of various permutations begin to strip hard-won rights of queer and trans people across the U.S., and as homophobic and racist Christians dominate more of the national discourse, the Gospel has begun to feel urgent. Progressive people engaging with it must make ourselves known.

The Bible is a big flawed book (66 books, actually) and I have never been able to stop reading it, no matter how much I tried. It forms the foundation of how I understand my relationship to the earth, other people, and all the questions I don’t have answers to. Those of us who are Christians have a responsibility to interrogate and push back against exclusionary theologies and politics.

My church is an affluent, predominately white, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregation in an affluent, predominately white part of Dallas. Like most Mainline Protestant churches in this decade, it is making strides toward LGBT inclusion and pursuing a more justice-centered theology, and it also carries a ton of baggage around race, money, sexuality, and power. It cherishes committees and processes, and it is home to many people who are genuinely trying to make positive impacts on the community and working to divest from the white privilege that has kept them isolated for so long. This happens slowly, and it is only possible when individuals step forward and share what they know. When I taught Ruth to my 7th grade class and framed it inside that weekend’s events, I refused to water down one of scripture’s richest stories. Instead, I hope I gave them the opportunity to examine the relevance of scripture for themselves and our community in that moment.

Religion is certainly relevant right now, but is faith? Can Christian teachings form a meaningful part of my activism? What are the possible theological justifications for all this evil bullshit brewing in Congress, and how do we dispel those? What does it mean to be a white queer Protestant working in solidarity with communities of color, trans women, and other communities who face the greatest threats from Trump and evangelical Christianity? These are some of the questions I’ll be exploring in this bi-weekly column.