Most people aren’t aware of Project 2025, or its playbook, “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise”—but you need to be. In stark terms, Project 2025 reveals the conservatives’ plan to enact a sweeping “Don’t Say Gay” policy that will effectively blot out all LGBTQ content on the internet a...
Some quotes:
“The Mandate for Leadership” is a 920-page document that details how the next Republican administration will implement radical and sweeping changes to the entirety of government. This blueprint assumes that the next president will be able to rule by fiat under the unitary executive theory (which posits that the president has the power to control the entire federal executive branch). It is also based on the premise that the next president will implement Schedule F, which allows the president to fire any federal employee who has policy-making authority, and replace them with a presidential appointee who is not voted on in the Senate.
So they're gonna take over the executive branch.
And businesses will support and fund this effort because:
The business wish list calls for eliminating federal agencies, stripping those that remain of regulatory power, and deregulating industries. The president would directly manage and influence Department of Justice and FBI cases, which would allow him to pursue criminal cases against political enemies. Environmental law would be gutted, and states would be prevented from enforcing their own environmental laws.
And what about the social wish list?
The social conservative wish list calls for ending abortion, diversity and inclusion efforts, protections for LGBTQ people, and most importantly, banning any and all LGBTQ content. In fact, “The Mandate for Leadership” makes eradicating LGBTQ people from public life its top priority. Its No. 1 promise is to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.” They are explicit in how they plan to do so, as you’ll see in the paragraph below. They plan to proceed by declaring any and all LGBTQ content to be pornographic in nature.
“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
When they talk about pornography, this includes any content discussing or portraying LGBTQ figures from the children’s books I Am Jazz and And Tango Makes Three to the Trevor Project’s suicide hotline. We know this by looking at how “don’t say gay” laws have been implemented in Florida: This is literally their model. It’s been tried in Virginia. It’s also arguable that LGBTQ parents would be subject to arrest, imprisonment, and being put on sex-offender registries for “exposing children to pornography” simply by being LGBTQ and having children.
It would also likely criminalize any therapist, doctor, or counselor who provided affirming therapy to trans youth. Indeed, the document makes it explicitly clear they want nationwide bans on abortion and access to affirming care for trans youth, while calling for conversion therapies to be the only available treatments. It could be argued as well that people who are visibly trans in public are pornographic or obscene, because they might be seen by a minor. This understanding of intent is in line with the call to “eradicate transgenderism from public life.”
There’s also the matter of the internet: Any Internet Service Provider (ISP) that transmits or receives data about transgender people could potentially be liable if conservatives have their way. When you read the final sentence of the excerpted paragraph, the clear intent is that the same would apply to any social media company that allows any (positive) discussion or depiction of transgender individuals, as it would be considered pornographic and contributing to harming a minor.
And how will they do this shit?
The organizations that drafted “The Mandate for Leadership” understand that blue states, which have sanctuary laws for transgender people, are unlikely to comply. It’s difficult to imagine California arresting and prosecuting teachers, librarians, doctors, therapists, bookstores (virtual or physical), LGBTQ parents, and especially LGBTQ people merely for existing in public. This is why they included the following paragraph:
“Where warranted and proper under federal law, initiate legal action against local officials—including District Attorneys—who deny American citizens the “equal protection of the laws” by refusing to prosecute criminal offenses in their jurisdictions. This holds true particularly for jurisdictions that refuse to enforce the law against criminals based on the Left’s favored defining characteristics of the would-be offender (race, so-called gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.) or other political considerations (e.g., immigration status).”
This is calling for the executive branch to use the Department of Justice to threaten prosecution of any local or state officials if they do not charge LGBTQ people and their allies with crimes under the pretense that they are breaking federal and state laws against exposing minors to pornography. If people at the Department of Justice refuse to go along with this, then they can simply be replaced under Schedule F. While the excerpted paragraph above includes references to immigration, the fact that it explicitly includes gender identity, and fits in with the previous calls to designate anything trans-related as pornographic, clearly telegraphs their intent.
The result of these actions will be perhaps the biggest power play against states rights in American history, and the threat is clear. If blue states refuse to turn on their own transgender citizens, then the federal government will do everything in its power to decapitate the leadership of those states using the Department of Justice. Conservatives are making the bet that individual district attorneys will not risk prosecution, and prison, on behalf of a tiny, despised minority. They’re betting that state governors will not be willing to risk both prosecution and a constitutional crisis over transgender people.
Well, fuck!
In addition to voting, what should we do about this?
This is why I get so mad when people act like political opponents "just disagree with each other", and that we should all still be able to get along. These people won't be happy and won't stop until they're allowed to murder people like me in the streets just for being gay.
I see it the same way I see the lead-up to the holocaust: an effort to scapegoat a minority group and divert the outrage of a downwardly mobile middle class away from wealthy capitalists
Just remember, this shit started a year or 2 ago with "We must protect the children" (the current attacks, before I get well achkshuallay'd. yes I know this shit inherently goes back to Reagan, and more)
They got their foot in the door getting "controversial" stuff out of elementary schools, and immediately seized on that to get their undesirable content out of middle, and high school, and even colleges and public libraries.
"For the children" has always been, and will always be, nothing more than an authoritarian attempt to push through power grabs and democracy undermining legislation.
I've wondered for awhile what it would look like if they managed to succeed in a religion-based takeover of the USA. I figure the dominant force in the world's varieties of Christianity being Catholicism would have some influence (and since the Pope has more money than God) so it's entirely possible that the "one true religion" ruling the country would end up being Catholicism and there would be a lot of really disappointed Protestant fascists.
EDIT: also I was thinking that's the more likely result as the majority of SC justices are Catholic currently
“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”
The Alt-Right fetishizes LGBTQ+ lifestyles and can not fathom that it's not something that the average person does...
Also, every accusation is projection and a confession at this point.
Most people aren’t aware of Project 2025, or its playbook, “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise”—but you need to be. In stark terms, Project 2025 reveals the conservatives’ plan to enact a sweeping “Don’t Say Gay” policy that will effectively blot out all LGBTQ content on the internet as well as any published material with LGBTQ content, no matter how benign.
Project 2025 is a coalition of prominent conservative organizations that includes the Claremont Institute, Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Research Council, Hillsdale College, Heritage Foundation, Freedom Works, American Legislative Exchange Council, American Principles Project, and dozens of others. The organization’s goal is to lay out a “first 180 days” agenda for the next administration, and to recruit conservatives to fill positions within the federal government appointed by the executive branch.
The Heritage Foundation alone is a massive, well-connected think tank with an annual budget of $38 million. Mike Pence joined in 2021. They were instrumental in staffing the Trump administration and directing his policies, with at least 66 Heritage Foundation employees and alumni given positions in the administration.
For those of us not in the US, I think this also highlights the real need to loosen the US's stranglehold on the Internet at large. The US has disproportionate power to control content on the Internet as a whole, because so many services and so much infrastructure resides there.
This highlights the importance of building redundant services elsewhere in the world, and moving content outside the US in general. So if the US tries to remove LGBTQ+ content in some cultural crusade, you laugh at them. Make them firewall it, like China, if they don't like it.
I'm all for arming the resistance, but I feel it's important to point out that if someone doesn't feel able and/or safe handling a firearm that's ok too, there are other ways to support those on the front lines and the rest of the community.
Why are the Democrat's not pushing to expose this? The GOP pushes culture wars with wanting to kill trans people. The Democrat's should be just as loud but with exposing the disgusting things that the GOP do on a regular basis that is straight up fucking evil. They have practically unlimited material to work with!
IMO because the average voter won't pay attention to some manifesto. Average people who vote Democrat don't get riled up to go to the polls because some Republicans wrote this document.
Lol, as if the rest of the world isn't on the same race to the bottom.. If anything, some of the current, never mind potential, leaders would probably try to join forces...
That didn't stop the US from becoming a major superpower in the 58 years after WWII when policies like this were in place nationally. It's the Lavender Scare all over again and the return of the anti-sodomy laws in different wrapping paper. Don't forget those laws were enforced until they were overturned June 26, 2003.
I always found it extremely strange that a nation which enjoys true representative democracy has locked itself in a two-party system. And worse, they can’t even successfully launch a new, fiscally conservative party without all the batshit insanity and the prevalent bigotry associated with the GOP.
I always found it extremely strange that a nation which enjoys true representative democracy has locked itself in a two-party system.
That's because the US doesn't enjoy a true representative democracy at all. The US electoral system is awful.
First of all it's a First-Past-The-Post plurality voting system. Widely regarded as pretty much the worst "reasonable" voting system around. It is not very representative, it makes voters vote strategically, and it is basically guaranteed that it will devolve into a two-party system.
Then on top of that they have the Electoral College, which takes an already non-representative system, and makes some people's votes worth more than others.
And then on top of that they have legalised bribery in the form of "lobbying".
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
and later, more bluntly,
In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
Something like 70% of Americans want singlepayer healthcare, 75% want Citizen's United repealed, and iirc 90% of Americans want universal background checks for firearm purchases.
With every month I'm ever more sure I won't ever travel to that shithole. Even if this never passes, this clearly shows how mentally deranged half the country is.
It's more like 30% and even then they don't actually want most of this shit, they're just too caught up in the propaganda bullshit that makes them hate the 30% on the "other team" to the point that they'll vote for anyone that says "I'll kick a Democrat if you vote for me!"
We're welcoming the atrocious social behavior of the past all so we can watch politicians kick people we don't like because some millionaires on T.V and radio are fucking propagandists... It's "fun."
PROVE IT! If anyone's destroying anything, it's you! You all HATE straight people with a passion I find hard to believe but you do and you'll do everything you can to destroy everything straight and all things associated WITH straight. That's YOUR agenda and everyone knows it. That's why even the GAY COMMUNITY does NOT LIKE the TQ lunatics! Prove me wrong! Protip: you can't!