Be Gay Do Crafts

All information from news articles and Wikipedia

Overall a major Trump ally in general, despite originally calling him a “jackass” and a “race-baiting, xenophobic” in 2015 (broken clock is right twice a day).

Consistently pushed for anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Voted for the Defense of Marriage Act as a member of the House in 1996, later supported a proposed constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. Graham voted against the legislation that repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Graham also voted against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in 2013 (law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity). In 2022, Graham voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, which repealed the Defense of Marriage Act and required federal and interstate recognition of legally performed same-sex and interracial marriages.

Identified as a “Reagan-style Republican”

Wanted to push through Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination ASAP. Kavanaugh was accused by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford of sexually assaulting her in high school, in which she gave damning and humiliating (for Kavanaugh) testimony for. Graham stated he was “unmoved” by it and doubted her recollection. SNL did a pretty accurate sketch depicting his indifference towards her. Graham used his time to speak in Kavanaugh's defense, describing him as a victim who had been put through "hell" by "the most unethical sham" he had seen in his time in politics.

In 2013, when it came out about the NSA accessing private data of citizens, Graham stated he was "glad" the NSA was collecting phone records.

Overall a huge lover of war crimes committed in Guantanamo Bay. Of U.S. citizens accused of supporting terrorism, Graham said before the Senate, "When they say, 'I want my lawyer,' you tell them, 'Shut up. You don't get a lawyer. You are an enemy combatant, and we are going to talk to you about why you joined Al Qaeda.'" Graham said he amended the Department of Defense Authorization Act in order to give military lawyers, as opposed to politically appointed lawyers, a more independent role in the oversight of military commanders. He argued that two of the largest problems leading to the detainee abuse scandals at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib were this lack of oversight and troops' confusion over legal boundaries.

In July 2010, Graham suggested that U.S. citizenship as a birthright guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution should be amended, and that any children born to illegal immigrants in the United States should be considered illegal immigrants.

Graham opposed extending background checks for those seeking gun ownership.

Graham opposed President Obama's health reform legislation; he voted against the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and against the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. He played a leading role in efforts to repeal Obamacare, authoring the Graham–Cassidy amendment, which would have given states permission to remove protections for individuals with preexisting conditions.

In 2015, Graham sponsored the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act in the Senate, which bans abortion after 20 weeks of gestation (exemption for mother’s health or rape/incest). In May 2022, Graham advocated that the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade. In September 2022 Graham introduced legislation to institute a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the patient.

In 2002, he voted for the Iraq Resolution, which authorized military action against Iraq. He also supported the invasion of Iraq. Graham and senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, who were frequently dubbed "the three amigos", traveled widely, pushing for American military intervention.

On November 6, 2010, Graham called for a preemptive military strike to weaken the Iranian regime. In 2011, he supported a continuing U.S. military presence in Iraq.

Graham supported the NATO-led military intervention in Libya.

On March 11, 2019, Graham said he would encourage the Trump administration to recognize the Golan Heights, which is internationally recognized as part of Syria, as part of Israel.

On October 10, 2023, Graham tweeted that he "unapologetically stand[s] with Israel" during the Gaza war. He called the conflict a "religious war" and said that Gaza should be "flattened". On October 31, 2023, Graham said that no amount of civilian casualties in Gaza would lead him to question Israel's goal of eradicating Hamas.

“You can always assume one thing about your clients; and that is that they are doing their best. Always assume everyone is doing their best. And if they’re having a day where their best just isn’t that great, or their best doesn’t look like your best, you have to be okay with that.”

The boycott is working, y'all. YouTube is panicking, trying to get people to buy Premium. They're advertising themselves on other platorms, when YT used to be the place to advertise. They're trying to bribe people with discount codes.

IT IS WORKING

Keep fighting the good fight

young queers hate anyone that isn't young.

i wish it was more complex than that. it's always couched in some other argument of course, about how times have changed or how old people are inherently more conservative or how "outdated" language is "offensive", rich out of touch boomers etc, but it's just a distraction. new young people enter the queer community and want it all to be fresh and new and sexy, they want to be the trailblazers, the first generation really pushing back, the first true radicals. after all, if the previous generations had done it right, they'd have defeated bigotry and oppression, right? so they must have been fighting wrong. they must have been bad queers - sorry, bad LGBTQIA+'s. so they should shut up and let us kids fix it.!

of course there will be black and white photos of "elders" and a sort of performed reverence for "history" and us "always being here", but only as history, never as contemporaries, as members of our continuous community that we should actively listen to. the voices of those that came before are only revered once they're dead and they can't argue back at teenagers wildly misreading and rewriting their lives... or maybe even worse, the fresh queers might discover their revolutionary new praxis system has actually been done before!!

the excuse i hate most though?

"we lost a whole generation to AIDS"

i am so fucking sick of hearing this, absolutely sick to my stomach of it. because we didn't! i am not at all going to minimise how horrific the aids catastrophe was to our community or how many it killed, because i have heard first hand stories of people that lived through it, who lost friends and families to it.

but that's the point. they lived through it. many queers did! depending on where you are, most queers did!

we have a living, continuous, unbroken line of queers spanning back all of living memory who we could truly embrace as elders of a community, to care for and learn from, so that we don't have to stumble through alone, but we don't. a "queer elder" is someone like me apparently, 35. i keep having people in their early 20's tell me how thankful they are for my "wisdom", like bitch, there are 60-80 year old queers out there, ready to tell their stories! they will know a fuckton more than me, and all of it is still relevant!

when i was in my 20's, and i was lucky enough to learn from some of them at the rare events where they were welcomed; 50yo's setting up casual evenings for anyone and everyone to come and talk and share stories and learn from each other. i had a therapist once that was a grumpy old dyke that came out in the 70's, and while we often had friction in our opinions on mental health strategies, her experience was invaluable for me untangling a lot of internalized hatred and self loathing. it broke my heart one day when she just straight up said "people would rather pretend we'd all died from aids though, than have to listen to what we've got to say".

but even in the decade since then, it's got worse and worse.

everyone i know my age who once had an active and thriving social network in the queer community has withdrawn into isolation. we live in small pockets with few friends. there's no space left for us. all ages events and gatherings are organised for the fresh and young, and they complain if we're there - we being anyone who dares to be a little wrinkly and saggy. any event that has a minimum age, 30+, 40+, 50+ etc, get flooded with hate for being "exclusionary", or "hoarding resources" like community is a 4X game. teenagers complain about "creepy old predators" having picnics at midsumma carnival. people in their 60's are told to go kill themselves for daring to use the same language they did 40 years ago - ironically right in the middle of the aids crisis that supposed cost us all our elders. horizontal ageist violence in the queer community is some of the nastiest emotional vitriol i've seen, and i've been hate crimed (:(:

so we withdraw into eternal loneliness, looking for scraps, being told our names and flags and core identities are as hurtful as the weapons of the oppressors. told we should either ovverhaul our entire experience of being queer to fit in with what's acceptable in this 3-year cycle of new identities and symbols, or stfu and go away.

but there's this pervasive fear and hopelessness you see among young queers, talking about how high our suicide rates are, talking about losing a whole generation to aids; because when we're made invisible, what are the youth supposed to think other than that we've got an expiry date, and they won't live past 29?

the elders are here and they need love and support too, or the cycle will just repeat, and those fresh sexy young queers will also grow up and be discarded, again and again.

there is a tendency to dispose of anyone who says a wrong thing, has a wrong kink, isn’t ideologically pure in the way the in-group is etc.

it is a sad way to be in community, if you can even call it a community, when everyone lives in fear of making a mistake and being ostracized as a “harm-doer”; and it is exactly what fascists and homophobes want—it serves their interests for us to eat our own.

Friend: “hey my son can’t concentrate on his homework. He chooses to do literally anything else everytime. He said his head doesn’t feel like it.”

Me: “Did you give him music?”

Friend: “No! No tech until he’s done! He doesn’t need more distracted.”

Me:

“k, bring me the child”

*Go to her house*

*points to the obviously ADHD boy struggling with his homework*

Me: “so your head doesn’t feel like doing homework?”

Son: “yeah. It would rather do ANYTHING else.”

Me: *unwrapping earbuds* here, listen to this for an hour while you do it.

French voice: 1hr later

Son: “k I’m done! :-)”

Friend: “wow, what’d you give him? Concentra, Adderall, Ritalin‽”

In particular, I recommend the relax/study livestream radio. Or just about any of their mixes. Fantasic Music:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZyyXrEF2WCZbI653PFNBbA Both the Chill and the Jazz playlists are excellent.  Jazzhop Cafe:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi8wqezBudeAiTdKOX571ug

Their ChillMix videos are the best.  Jazzhop Cafe Archive:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKbD–QKXKosHmSXarqYUeg Name is self-evident.  I believe ChilledCow also has a livestream, but I honestly prefer Chillhop. YMMV https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSJ4gkVC6NrvII8umztf0Ow

[ID: A tweet that reads "For my trans friends on testosterone, go check your lot number, there's been a recall due to bacterial contamination." The tweet includes a link to the news source detailing the recall and a screenshot from that source. The link to the news article is:

okay

that will require stealth trans men to out themselves in order to receive help

that will require closeted trans women to out themselves in order to receive help

that will require nonbinary people who don't ""look nonbinary"" because they look too masculine to out themselves in order to receive help

it will also alienate transfems & trans people who were AMAB who haven't realized they're trans yet from spaces that could provide them a safe place to explore gender & sexuality and be introduced to the idea of being trans

trans people are eventually going to get uncomfortable with your hatred for cis men, because people who were AMAB are gonna wonder if you secretly hate them for being "actually men" and trans mascs are gonna wonder if you hate them for being men at all

people attracted to cis men are going to feel uncomfortable when they try and bring up their love for men including cis men or bring their cis boyfriends/partners/friends to your spaces

there are cis queer men & queer men who blur the lines between cis and trans and they have just as much a right to queer spaces as you do

^ intersex men also exist including intersex cis men

there is never going to be a group of people who it is alright to blindly hate just because of circumstances of their birth or identity and every time you try you are going to end up hurting people. embrace compassion and nuance

i've just lost hundreds of docs and pdfs and i'm beyond pissed right now

okay so, gonna tell ya'll something awesome rn

google drive is a mess sometimes with its storage things and if you're unlucky it might delete some of your files and you won't realise until it's well past the point where they won't be in 'trash' anymore and you're fucked

all is not lost however!

if you're on drive via browser, hit the little ? in a circle next to the settings cog and select "help"

search for "file recovery"

it'll show you the ways to try and recover your files on pc, android, and mac etc

these don't matter

you need to scroll down to the bottom and just hit the "contact us"

you'll be logged out automatically

log back in

click the little box to give google permission to attempt to restore your files for that account

click "submit"

give them some time to work but it's an automatic process

i've got most of my files back in less than 10 minutes

The writer of two of the most well known stories worldwide, The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo was a black man. 

chose to take on his slave grandmother’s last name, Dumas, like his father did before him.

grew up too poor for formal education, so was largely self-taught, including becoming a prolific reader, multilingual, well-travelled, and a foodie, resulting in his writing both a combination encyclopedia/cookbook (which just— is fucking outrageous to me) AND the adaptation of The Nutcracker on which Tchaikovsky based his ballet

he also wrote a LOOOOT of nonfiction and fiction about history, politics, and revolution, bc he was pro-monarchy, but a radical cuss, and that got him in a lot of hot water at home and abroad.

even beyond that, he generally put up with a lot of racist bullshit in France, so he went and wrote a novel about colonialism and a BLATANTLY self-insert anti-slavery vigilante hero (which he then cribbed from to write the Count of Monte Cristo, the main character of which, Edmond Dantés, Dumas also based on himself).

(…a novel which also features a LOAD of PoC beyond the Count, and at LEAST one queer character, btw, bc EVERY MOVIE ADAPTATION OF ANYTHING BY DUMAS IS A LIE; seriously, at LEAST one of the four Musketeers is Black, y'all.)

famously, when some fuckshit or other wanted to come at Dumas with some anti-Black foolishness, Dumas replied, “My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.”

for the bicentennial of his birthday, Pres. Jacques Cirac was like, “…sorry about the hella racism,” and had Dumas’s ashes reinterred at the Panthéon of Paris, bc if you’re gonna keep the corpses of the cream of the crop all together, Dumas’s more widely read and translated than literally everybody else.

and they are still finding stuff old dude wrote, seriously; like discovering “lost” works as recently as 2002, publishing stuff for the first time as recently as 2005.

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