Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. BlueSky: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
Lady Gaga took to Twitter to discuss her views on the election of Donald Trump as the President of the United States and the part media plays in normalizing his intolerant, disgusting behavior.
Feel free to sign the petition she mentioned in the above tweet HERE, which asks the Electoral College to hand the Presidency over to Hillary Clinton. Chances are slim something will result from it, but progress isn’t made without doing whatever we can to initiate and encourage change.
These proposals are not simply un-American and wrong-headed, they are unlawful and unconstitutional. They violate the First, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and 14th Amendments.
This morning, Donald J. Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States, and the ACLU has a message for him.
President-elect Trump, as you assume the nation’s highest office, we urge you to reconsider and change course on certain campaign promises you have made. These include your plan to amass a deportation force to remove 11 million undocumented immigrants; ban the entry of Muslims into our country and aggressively surveil them; punish women for accessing abortion; reauthorize waterboarding and other forms of torture; and change our nation’s libel laws and restrict freedom of expression.
These proposals are not simply un-American and wrong-headed, they are unlawful and unconstitutional. They violate the First, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and 14th Amendments. If you do not reverse course and instead endeavor to make these campaign promises a reality, you will have to contend with the full firepower of the ACLU at every step. Our staff of litigators and activists in every state, thousands of volunteers and millions of card-carrying members and supporters are ready to fight against any encroachment on our cherished freedoms and rights.
One thing is certain: We will be eternally vigilant every single day of your presidency. And when you leave the Oval Office, we will do the same with your successor as we have done throughout our nearly 100 years of existence. The Constitution and the rule of law are stronger than any one person, and we will see to that. We will never waver.
Finding out you’re queer as a teenager or adult when you were raised outside of that culture is kind of like those stories about finding out you’re the secret heir to some other kingdom, tbh.
Something you’ve always thought of as far-off and Nothing To Do With You is suddenly this massive part of your life.
All your ideas about what the rest of your life would be like are suddenly shattered and you have to try to figure out what it will actually be like.
You have to learn a whole new history, language, and set of manners, if you want to embrace your heritage.
It can become suddenly very important that no one discovers your true identity, because you might be in danger if they knew.
You’ll probably discover a whole new family that will love you.
You might get to introduce your family of origin and your found family… or you might have to leave your old family behind after they find out who you are.
If you remain part of your family of origin, you constantly have to educate them so they don’t embarrass you with your new family or hurt you by insulting who you are.
You might totally change the way you dress, wear your hair, etc..
People who knew what to watch for turn out to have guessed long before you figured it out, and you constantly discover new clues you never noticed before.
Your expectations wrt marriage might suddenly become totally different.
Now I kinda want to write something where a lesbian who’s always known she was gay finds out she’s a princess, and meets a princess who’s always known her heritage but is just realizing she’s sapphic…
Detroit Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy has never been one to mince his opinions, so it was only a matter of time before he went on a rant after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States.
Speaking to reporters prior to the Pistons’ NBA matchup against the Phoenix Suns on Wednesday, Van Gundy went on a nearly six-minute, unprompted tirade on the unconventional president-elect, who beat Hillary Clinton to the White House, saying he was ashamed of the public for voting in the 70-year-old.
Here is the full transcript of Van Gundy’s comments to the media:
“I didn’t vote for [George W.] Bush, but he was a good, honourable man with whom I had political differences, so I didn’t vote for him. But for our country to be where we are now, who took a guy who - I don’t care what anyone says, I’m sure they have other reasons and maybe good reasons for voting for Donald Trump - but I don’t think anybody can deny this guy is openly and brazenly racist and misogynistic and ethnic-centric, and say, 'That’s OK with us, we’re going to vote for him anyway’.
“We have just thrown a good part of our population under the bus, and I have problems with thinking that this is where we are as a country. It’s tough on [the team], we noticed it coming in. Everybody was a little quiet, and I thought, ‘Well, maybe the game the other night’. And so we talked about that, but then Aron Baynes said, ‘I don’t think that’s why everybody’s quiet. It’s last night’.
“It’s just, we have said - and my daughters, the three of them - our society has said, ‘No, we think you should be second-class citizens. We want you to be second-class citizens. And we embrace a guy who is openly misogynistic as our leader’. I don’t know how we get past that.
“Martin Luther King said, 'The arc of the moral universe is long, but bends toward justice’. I would have believed in that for a long time, but not today. What we have done to minorities… in this election is despicable. I’m having a hard time dealing with it. This isn’t your normal candidate. I don’t even know if I have political differences with him. I don’t even know what are his politics. I don’t know, other than to build a wall and ‘I hate people of colour, and women are to be treated as sex objects and as servants to men’. I don’t know how you get past that. I don’t know how you walk into the booth and vote for that.
“I understand problems with the economy. I understand all the problems with Hillary Clinton, I do. But certain things in our country should disqualify you. And the fact that millions and millions of Americans don’t think that racism and sexism disqualifies you to be our leader, in our country. We presume to tell other countries about human-rights abuses and everything else. We better never do that again, when our leaders talk to China or anybody else about human-rights abuses.
“We just elected an openly, brazen misogynist leader and we should keep our mouths shut and realize that we need to be learning maybe from the rest of the world, because we don’t got anything to teach anybody.
“It’s embarrassing. I have been ashamed of a lot of things that have happened in this country, but I can’t say I’ve ever been ashamed of our country until today. Until today. We all have to find our way to move forward, but that was - and I’m not even trying to make a political statement. To me, that’s beyond politics.
“You don’t get to come out and talk about people like that, and then lead our country and have millions of Americans embrace you. I’m having a hard time being with people. I’m going to walk into this arena tonight and realize that - especially in this state - most of these people voted for the guy. Like, [expletive], I don’t have any respect for that. I don’t.
“And then you read how he was embraced by conservative Christians. Evangelical Christians. I’m not a religious guy, but what the hell Bible are they reading? I’m dead serious. What Bible are you reading? And you’re supposed to be - it’s different. There are a lot of different groups we can be upset at. But you’re Christians. You’re supposed to be - at least you pride yourself on being the moral compass of our society. And you said, ‘Yeah, the guy can talk about women like that. I’m fine with that’. He can disparage every ethnic group, and I’m fine with that.
“Look, I don’t get it. And I’m having a hard time taking it. I’m just glad that the people I’m with here - and I’ll include you guys, too - that I like. Because I’m going to have a hard time. I will say, one point of pride, I live in Oakland County, Michigan, and I was surprised, but Oakland County voted for Clinton. At least I can look around say, ‘We weren’t the ones putting that guy in office’.
“It’s incredible. I don’t know how you go about it, if you’re a person of colour today or a Latino. Because white society just said to you, again - not like we haven’t forever - but again, and emphatically, that I don’t think you deserve equality. We don’t think you deserve respect. And the same with women. That’s what we say today, as a country. We should be ashamed for what we stand for as the United States today.
“That’s it for me. I don’t have anything to say about the game tonight.”
