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Notes -
#”We’re coming for your children.”
The LGBTQ+ movement kicked out NAMBLA, genuine pederasts, in the 80’s in order to get sodomy laws aimed at consenting adults off the books. The American anti-pedophilia majority took a generation to accept this disavowal at face value.
The Pizzagate section of the Q or QAnon movement revived the bailey that gay people generally want to rape children to cultural relevance, and did so around the time the trans rights movement was pushing acceptance of transition. The motte version is that the gay community reproduces through social memetic contagion since they won’t reproduce sexually. One potent variation is the ironic and practically self-parodying “trans genocide” meme
The drag queen story hour program made the idea scarily realistic even to parents who didn’t subscribe to any of that conspiracy theory nonsense. And now there’s a new twist.
As chronicled by NBC News:
In the 21-second clip, circulated by a right-wing web streamer channel, dozens of people march in the streets and are clearly heard chanting, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re not going shopping.” But one voice that is louder than the crowd — it’s not clear whose, or whether the speaker was a member of the LGBTQ community — is heard saying at least twice, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.”
To conservative pundits, activists and lawmakers, the video confirmed the allegations they’ve levied in recent years that the LGBTQ community is “grooming” children.
But to Brian Griffin, the original organizer of the NYC Drag March, if that’s the worst they heard, it’s only because he wasn’t there this year.
Griffin said he chanted obscene things in the past, like “Kill, kill, kill, we’re coming to kill the mayor,” and joked about pubic hair and sex toys during marches. People at the Drag March regularly sing “God is a lesbian.”
“It’s all just words,” Griffin said. “It’s all presented to fulfill their worst stereotypes of us.”
The “coming for your children” chant has been used for years at Pride events, according to longtime march attendees and gay rights activists, who said it’s one of many provocative expressions used to regain control of slurs against LGBTQ people. And in this case, they said, right-wing activists are jumping on a single video to weaponize an out-of-context remark to further stigmatize the queer community.
Conservative politicians and pundits have increasingly referred to advocates for LGBTQ rights as “groomers,” associating people who oppose laws that restrict drag performances or classroom discussions of gender identity with pedophiles. The charge is an echo of a decades-old trope anti-gay activists have used to paint the community as a threat to the country’s youths, an allegation that some advocates say endangers LGBTQ people. And the intense reaction to the video has scared some attendees, who insist the quip has been taken out of context.
“It’s really scary to us,” said Fussy Lo Mein, a drag performer and activist who was at this year’s march and declined to give their real name because of safety concerns. “It doesn’t represent everybody — it represents that individual. I thought it was a dumb idea, and I started chanting on top of it with alternate verses.”
This seems to be equivalent to the Charlottesville “White Rights” event where “Jews will not replace us” was supposedly chanted. The outgroup only hears “WE ARE A THREAT TO EVERYONE YOU LOVE AND EVERYTHING YOU HOLD SACRED,” while the ingroup appreciates the nuance and gets a bit freaked out at the outgroup seeing only the surface level interpretation.
A year ago there was a kerfuffle around A Message From the Gay Community AKA "We are coming for your children" song, which was pretty blatant call that they are the ones who will educate kids into whatever their idea of "tolerance" is - and there is nothing you as a parent can do about that. Of course I think that this is all about clash of ideologies or one can say religions. Of course everybody thinks that they are projecting what is good into the world. There are people who think that books like Gender Queer or surgical transition of 15 years old kids is what tolerance means. So I'd say that "we're coming for your children" can be absolutely terrifying even if taken at face value by the criteria of said group - LGBTQIA+ pride protesters in this case. Radical Muslim imam proclaiming that he is going to teach your children how to interpret the Quran and spread goodness into the world, would probably be taken as a threat, despite his best intention of bringing them to heaven in his own mind.
The same for me. In my mind the LGBTQIA+ movement is now indistinguishable from radical religious cult. For me it is not unlike Scientologists infiltrating government institutions. So for these radicals to chant that they are going for my children is akin to Scientologists saying that they are going for my children (meaning they will "help" them by using scientology auditing method on them etc.).
Anyways, what is interesting is that there seems to be some self-awareness among these people that maybe they have shown their cards too soon and that they maybe overestimated their grip on our culture to some extent, given the current backlash. A year back there was a song by gay chorus about how they are going for our children, now it is a single voice in pride parade that is viewed as cringe by fellow marchers.
The gay choir song was just bad taste, plainly mocking the normies (until the last, saccharine verse about 'teaching belonging and love' in order to cover their asses).
So I just thought they were idiots (as well as some unkind thoughts about "what's all this stuff about it's unfair to stereotype gays because there isn't a distinct look or way of behaving, when these guys are every bit the stereotype of San Franciscan gay?")
I think the marches and chanting are meant to provoke, in a "ha ha only joking but not" way. Problem is, they may provoke someone to do something stupid (like beat up a marcher) and then it'll be all "this is the kind of homophobia that is still threatening gay people!" and not "okay, when you dare someone to punch you in the face, sometimes you do get punched in the face, and that's on you as much as on them".
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On religious cult. Found this yesterday. I haven’t found the source of it on whether it’s performatively making fun of Catholics or something else.
If you don’t want to click thru it looks like a mass in Catholic firm that replaces various creeds and parts of mass with pride/woke ideologies.
https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1673776078807240710?s=20
Nah, not performatively making fun of Catholics. Either it's one of the WomenPriests crowd, or it's one of the mainstream Protestant churches that went all-in on the women clergy, LGBT clergy, etc. Places like Episcopalians and Lutherans claim to be liturgical churches so they follow a particular order of service that still has roots in original Catholic liturgy.
One of the tiny, trendy, progressively liberal Christian bunches. Not mocking anyone but themselves with this silliness, because it's not going to bring in the LGBT people to fill the pews, and it's only driving away the more theologically conservative.
I feel like I’m being slow but I can’t figure out the “Jesus Christ who had two dads reference” especially if god had plural pronouns. Joseph is one dad though non-biological.
I feel like I want to save this video for next time I feel like making an argument that “woke/pride” is really a religion as an example.
Well, that's because they're Protestants and downplay the role of Mary 😁 (I've had worse arguments online with hardline Reformed/Calvinists who treat Mary as nothing more than an incubator; she pops out the sprog and that's it, her role is over and done with, and she wasn't that big a deal as mom anyway because any woman would have done).
Mostly it's them trying to be clever (and missing) at conservative/orthodox Christians in general about "oh you are all hung up about the gays, and protest the likes of 'Heather has two mommies', well your boy Jesus has two daddies, how do you like that?" It's an oldie but a (not) goodie that's floating around for a while.
They take God the Father and then Joseph as the foster father. They're pretty dumb theologically (and every other way). It's just them being dickheads (er, am I allowed say that?)
How is that tied to downplaying Mary? They're just going for connecting it to gay marriage, as you said.
In any case, as a "hardline Reformed/Calvinist" myself, Mary clearly had a bigger role than merely being pregnant with Jesus—she was his mother, raising him. I suppose we also see her at the cross. That's a lot less than the excess of devotion that Roman Catholics practice, of course, but it isn't nothing.
"Two daddies" displays the role of Mary as mother.
I mean, sure, but they're downplaying for a political point, not for a religious point.
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I think the Isla Bryson scandal in Scotland and the consequent damage it did to Nicola Sturgeon's political career was a real wake-up call for many TRAs: yet another reminder that Twitter is Not Real Life and the goodwill and tolerance of the general public has its limits. The near-constant accusations of "fascism" and "far-right sympathies" from TRAs in the last few months are textbook tactics of a group who knows they've overplayed their hand and are now on the defensive.
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