For the attendees of a circuit party in Georgia, coronavirus was the last thing on their minds.
Across digital flyers and social media posts, the organisers of Peach Party Atlanta 2020 urged attendees to come wearing face coverings and practice social distancing.
Yet, as much as the four-day festival was billed as a dialled-down affair, video footage taken at the sold-out circuit parties showed a vastly different story.
At the August 28 “Peach Party Tea Dance” held at Atanta LGBT+ club Heretic, scores of partygoers stuffed into the 1,000 square foot-wide space across three patios, fans occasionally dotting the dancefloor.
Despite signs instructing partygoers to maintain a distance as well as wear masks, the dance area was rammed with countless men pressed up against one another, and barely anyone was wearing a mask.
Similar scenes took place at a second Peach Party event held in Heretic the following night, as well as another event at District Atlanta on August 30, according to social media videos uploaded by attendees.
Just one event was held outdoors – the other six were in nightclubs, spaces considered by health experts as petri dishes for the coronavirus.
(Screen captures via Instagram)
Scenes of shirtless, maskless men at gay circuit party spark fury online.
For nine years, Peach Party has been a highlight of the Georgia circuit party calendar and a crucial way for the city’s LGBT+ community to blow off steam.
The beloved festival, typically held in June, was thrown into jeopardy as the coronavirus began to gnaw on nearly every facet of modern life and was delayed earlier this year.
Peach Party announced it would be running in August, with its website saying it has “scaled all events back to a small group instead of the normal party”, and noted that masks were “required”.
Heretic’s general manager Alan Collins beamed with pride in an August 13 Facebook post as he showed off a revamped patio space outside the club, now splashed with the colours of the Pride flag, prepping for the outdoor party.
Heretic hosted a queer circuity outdoor party event where patrons appeared to rarely wear face masks or conduct social distancing, despite club operators saying it would be mandatory. (Screen captures via Instagram)
He urged club-goers to come wearing masks and said that staffers could provide free masks as needed.
Moreover, Collins said, Heretic would operate at 35 per cent capacity and had installed hand sanitiser stations, in line with the Georgia Department of Health’s guidelines for bars operating amid the pandemic.
The code states that bars must “prevent activities that enable close human contact”, and that, for temporary outdoor events in which more than 50 people are attending, social distancing must be enforced.
“If you are sick or think you may have been exposed to COVID-19, PLEASE STAY HOME,” Collins added.
As images of the Peach Party crowds radiated online, some Facebook users branded those in attendance as “reckless”, while others simply resigned to saying: “No one cares anymore.”
At the time of writing, there have been at least 256,544 cases and 5,604 deaths in Georgia since the beginning of the pandemic, according to a New York Times database. More than 187,000 people have died across the US.
PinkNews contacted Peach Party Atlanta, Heretic and District for comment.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden added several former Obama administration officials as well as former South Bend, Ind. mayor and presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg to his transition team.
According to multiple media outlets, former National Security advisor Susan Rice and former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates are joining the transition team.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) and Jeff Zients, former President Obama’s National Economic Council director, will also reportedly join the transition team as co-chairs.
Texas assistant attorney general Nick Moutos has lost his job after he was criticised for past tweets in which he called trans people an “abomination” and promoted the QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracy theories.
Moutos is a lawyer and, until this week, was an assistant attorney general in Texas’ criminal prosecutions division.
On Thursday (September 3) Media Matters produced a report detailing Moutos’s racist, transphobic, homophobic, misogynistic and Islamophobic tweets, as well as his support of the controversial conspiracy theories. Every tweet included in the report was published by Mouto in 2020.
QAnon followers, among many outlandish claims, believe that Satan-worshipping paedophile rings involving high-ranking officials are working to take down president Donald Trump. Those who believe the conspiracy theory have been accused of inciting violence, and it was labelled a potential domestic terror threat by the FBI last year.
Pizzagate is another right-wing violence-linked conspiracy theory which preceded QAnon, and its supporters believe that Democrats have been trafficking children through a pizza restaurant in Washington, DC.
In July this year, Twitter announced that it would be cracking down on QAnon content on the platform.
Moutos responded to the announcement: “Q must be getting close to outing you as a pedophile or child trafficker or perhaps involved with Pizzagate?”
He has repeatedly used his Twitter account to refer to women, including house representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, as “Whore of Babylon”. When tweeting at both women, he used the hashtag “no warning shots” and suggested he was “armed and ready”.
Moutos is viciously Islamophobic, comparing Muslims to Nazis, and has also said that Omar is an “incestuous jihadi terrorist” who belongs in Guantanamo Bay.
He has described Islam as a “virus” that “seeks only to steel, kill, and destroy”, and claimed that the UK is “overrun with Muslims”.
The lawyer believes that the US is in the middle of a second civil war, and threatened Barrack Obama on Twitter: “I pray to meet you on the Civil War 2 battlefield.”
Moutos has also posted multiple anti-LGBT+ tweets, including ones calling trans people “abhorrent” and “an abomination” who “have a mental disorder”, and saying that supporting queer rights is “normalising perversion”.
Texas assistant attorney general Nick Moutos lost his job following the backlash against his comments.
Initially, when contacted about Nick Moutos and his comments on Twitter, a spokesperson for Texas’ office of the attorney general told Media Matters: “Thank you for bringing this to our attention.
“We’re looking into the matter and will address it as appropriate.”
But now, according to the Houston Chronicle, a spokesperson for the office said he no longer works there, without specifying why.
Moutos, however, wrote on Twitter: “Speaking out against the China Virus Plandemic [sic] & Democrats using it to steal Election 2020 makes people angry.
“Stories slamming me and others… were enough to cost me my job.”
On Friday (September 4), addressing the backlash against his anti-LGBT+ comments Moutos wrote on Twitter: “How is it ‘bigoted’ to say that LGBTQ is an abomination?”
A man who showed up to an LGBT+ bar with a rifle intent on shooting the patrons inside will serve less than four years in prison, but was not convicted of a hate crime.
Freddie Lee Doyle, 32, previously pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm, and has been held without bail for about 14 months.
According to Metro Weekly, Doyle drove to Rehab Bar & Grill in St Louis, Missouri on June 27, 2019, equipped with a Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle, bipod, scope, tactical light, four full rifle magazines and about 160 rifle rounds.
When he arrived in his car, he approached a man who was leaving another LGBT+ venue. Doyle asked him to get into the vehicle, before grabbing a rifle and aiming it at him.
When the man fled, Doyle got out of the car and chased him, aiming the rifle at Rehab patrons and screaming obscenities and homophobic slurs. He then started a verbal countdown before firing the gun into the air.
Assistant US attorney Janea Lamar said police rushed to the scene after hearing the gunshot, but Doyle hid his gun and told them the shooter had run down an alley, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Police discovered the rifle a short time later and arrested Doyle. When the victims of the attempted shooting came to identify him, he began yelling homophobic slurs again.
In charging documents, FBI special agent Jennifer Drews wrote that Doyle said if he’d had more time, he would “have killed those faggots”.
Stephen Williams, defending, said that he had been under the influence of methamphetamine and had struggled with depression, anxiety and ADHD.
Chief judge Rodney Sippel, of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, sentenced Doyle 46 months in prison, less than four years.
Shockingly, the motive for Doyle’s crime was not discussed in court and was reported by the media as “unclear”, however prosecutors agreed to not charge him with a hate crime in exchange for his previous guilty plea.
Assistant attorney General Eric Dreiband, of the Department of Justice’s civil rights division, said in a statement after the sentencing: “All people in this nation have the right to enjoy themselves at a bar and grill without fearing that they will be threatened, shot, and seriously injured or killed by bigoted criminals.
“The Department of Justice will not tolerate this kind of hateful violence.
“The Civil Rights Division strives to protect all Americans from acts of aggression and violence based on their race, colour or sexual orientation.”
Richard Grenell, the gay Republican who thinks Donald Trump is America’s “most pro-gay president”, has joined an anti-LGBT+ group that defended US ban on gay sex.
Grenell, who served previously as Trump’s interim director of national intelligence, has joined the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) as a special advisor for national security and foreign policy.
Described as “one of the main US religious-right legal powerhouses” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, ACLJ is a religious conservative legal organisation founded in 1990 by televangelist Pat Robertson, with a long history of fighting against LGBT+ rights and equality, and of spreading harmful homophobic and transphobic rhetoric.
Despite this, Grenell insists that the ACLJ “isn’t anti-gay” and that those who think so are “intolerant”.
The ACLJ helped draft the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, a law which explicitly defined marriage as the “legal union of one man and one woman” but was later struck down by the US Supreme Court.
In 2003, it filed amicus briefs defending US sodomy laws in the Lawrence v Texas Supreme Court case.
In its brief, organisation argued there is “an extensively documented health risk of same-sex sodomy” and said that a ban on gay sex “permissibly furthers public morality”. Ultimately it was unsuccessful, as the court ruled prohibiting private same-sex activity between consenting adults was unconstitutional.
The legal organisation is now led by father-son team Jay Sekulow and Jordan Sekulow, and under their leadership the ACLJ has doggedly worked through their offices in Zimbabwe and Kenya to make sure that “perversions” such as being gay are criminalised in African countries, according to Political Research Associates.
Richard Grenell nicknamed “Gaslight Grenell” by Human Rights Campaign.
On August 20, Richard Grenell starred in a video released by the Log Cabin Republicans, the largest group of LGBT+ conservatives in the US, which claimed that Donald Trump was the “most pro-gay president in American history”.
Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has nicknamed the the former-Trump official “Gaslight Grenell” over the “absurd” claim and his latest actions.
HRC president Alphonso David said in a statement: “‘Gaslight Grenell’ strikes again.
“From ridiculously and errantly calling Trump the ‘most pro-gay president in history’ to now joining the anti-LGBTQ American Center for Law and Justice, it’s clear ‘Gaslight Grenell’ has absolutely no backbone and no regard for the rights of LGBTQ people.”
Alphonso added: “‘Gaslight Grenell’ has no basis in reality to claim himself a ‘spokesperson’ for any segment of our community.
“Voters will not be fooled by his role as a Trump messenger. ‘Gaslight Grenell’, like Trump, is divorced from reality. It’s no wonder they seem to get along so well.”
“So ask yourself, do you believe in life after Trump?” That was the question asked by Cher, paraphrasing the title of her iconic song, at the virtual LGBTQ fundraiser she headlined for Joe Biden on Monday evening, according to a pool report.
“Hi, it’s me,” Cher said at she appearing at end of the 30-minute fundraiser on screen wearing a black leather biker jacket. “Your poster girl since I was 9 years-old. I walked into our living room and met two of the most adorable gay hairdressers ever.”
Also appearing at the event was Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), the most senior openly gay member of Congresss, lesbian Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Pete Buttigieg, who made waves in the Democratic primary as a gay presidential candidate.
The Anchorage Assembly on Wednesday passed a ban on “conversion therapy,” making illegal the practice of trying to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The practice has been widely condemned by medical professionals and counselors.
The move drew criticism from some religious institutions and groups as well as some parents who felt the ban infringed on parental and religious rights. The ordinance passed 9-2 with Assemblywomen Crystal Kennedy and Jamie Allard opposing.
The ban only pertains to licensed professionals, and specifically excludes clergy acting in a religious capacity and not as mental health professionals. It also excludes parents and others who are not licensed in provide counseling. The new law imposes a $500 fine on anyone who performs conversion therapy for each day they are in violation.
Hate group leader Tony Perkins rages:
The vote came despite widespread community opposition, with a majority of the 65 people who testified opposing the bill. Credit goes to a large local church (Anchorage Baptist Temple) and the Alaska Family Council for raising the alarm. Assembly Members Jamie Allard and Crystal Kennedy made heroic efforts to either defeat the measure or amend it to mitigate some of its harmful effects.
However, Family Research Council had a strong virtual presence in the form of Senior Fellow for Policy Studies Peter Sprigg. Last month, Peter spoke to the Anchorage Baptist Temple by video and, together with Matt Sharp of the Alliance Defending Freedom, briefed a group of Anchorage pastors via Zoom to educate them about the ordinance and encourage them to speak out against it.
Unfortunately, despite Peter’s best efforts, the Anchorage Assembly chose to move forward with a measure that is not anchored in constitutional law, professional ethics, or scientific truth.
The congressional GOP’s campaign arm is asking other Republican and conservative groups to attack Gina Ortiz Jones, the Democratic candidate for a key swing House seat in Texas, for being gay. A NRCC website outlining its preferred attacks on candidates instructs outside groups to include reminders of Jones’ sexual orientation in digital and TV advertising and mailers, highlighting an image of Jones with her partner.
The NRCC website, DemocratFacts.org, is a way for the committee to communicate its preferred messaging to Republican super PACs and other conservative groups without running afoul of campaign finance laws barring direct coordination. But of the dozens of candidates covered by DemocratFacts, Jones appears to be the only one pictured with their spouse or partner.
The allegations — that the young, gay mayor had used his position of power to sexually proposition vulnerable college students — spread quickly through his western Massachusetts district, leading one member of Holyoke’s city council to call for his resignation.
But less than a week later, The Intercept published explosive reports alleging that members of the College Democrats at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where Morse once worked, had schemed for months to create a sex scandal to derail Morse’s progressive challenge to incumbent Rep. Richard Neal, with whom the students reportedly wanted to secure an internship.
Two debates later, and a week before the Massachusetts Democratic primary, Morse says he has been vindicated, and that he is raising more money through donations than at any point so far in his campaign.
“A number of folks are seeing it for what it is, in terms of the the language and response to the accusations being rooted in age-old homophobic tropes and the constant overpolicing of the personal lives, the sex lives, of gay men and members of the queer community,” Morse told NBC News.
Relationships with ‘teenagers’
The Aug. 7 article in UMass Amherst’s paper, the Daily Collegian, reported that the school’s College Democrats chapter had sent a letter to Morse saying he was disinvited from their future events because the Holyoke mayor used apps such as Grindr, Tinder and Instagram to meet college students “who were as young as 18 years old,” reportedly making them feel uncomfortable.
The next day, Masslive.com reported on allegations that Morse had relationships with “teenagers,” and UMass Amherst posted a statement saying it was “launching an immediate review of the matter” and had no plans to hire Morse back as a lecturer in the political science department, where he worked from 2014 to 2019. The College Democrats of Massachusetts published a letter on Twitter on Aug. 9, saying Morse “abused his power for sexual relationships” and confirmed they sent a similar emailed statement to the candidate himself.
The LGBTQ Victory Fund condemned Sullivan, saying it “believes the use of the word ‘teenagers’ is meant to purposely evoke homophobic stereotypes of gay men as pedophiles.”
“The architects of these efforts knew this is where the conversation would lead – with no regard for the homophobia it would unleash,” the group said, asking those supporting Sullivan’s motion to “ask themselves whether he would treat a straight candidate the same way.”
Sullivan did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment. However, he told Masslive last week that he is seeking a Holyoke City Council vote on an investigation into the allegations against Morse.
In response to a request from NBC News about the Daily Collegian’s role in the first days of the controversy and the source of the letter from the College Democrats to Morse, which the paper was the first to report on, a spokesperson shared this statement on Tuesday: “The letter was provided by a member within a chapter of the College Democrats of Massachusetts, who was granted anonymity. As newspaper policy, we do not comment further on sourcing.”
Two days after the first story broke, Morse posted a statement on Twitter saying accusations that he abused his position were “false.”
“I have never, in my entire life, had a non-consensual sexual encounter with anyone,” he wrote. “I have never used my position of power as Mayor or UMass lecturer for romantic or sexual gain, or to take advantage of students. I have never violated UMass policy.”
Morse decided to stay in the race, saying he trusts the voters of Massachusetts’ 1st Congressional District to make up their own minds as to whether homophobia influenced the alleged scheme.
“If voters aren’t seeing the homophobia, they are certainly seeing the establishment — they are seeing a powerful incumbent at risk of losing a seat and the people around him willing to do whatever it takes for him to hold onto power,” Morse said.
But just as quickly as the scandal had appeared, it seemed to disappear: A new report cast strong doubts on the original College Democrats letter five days after it made news.
On Aug. 12, The Intercept reported on leaked chat logs showing these students conspiring in 2019 to gin up a sex scandal in order to harm Morse’s candidacy — and help his opponent, incumbent Democratic Rep. Richard Neal. The Intercept — which did not name the source of the leaked chat logs and private Instagram messages, some of which were included in the article — reported that these young Democrats hoped that by sabotaging Morse’s campaign they would endear themselves to Rep. Neal, first elected in 1988 and, as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, one of the most powerful incumbent Democrats in Congress.
Two days later, UMass Amherst — which bans faculty from sexual relationships with students “for whom the faculty member has any responsibility for supervision, evaluation, grading, advising, employment, or other instructional or supervisory activity” —announced it had hired an independent attorney to investigate the scandal.
The College Democrats of Massachusetts did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment, but in a statement to HuffPost, which was shared on Twitter, the College Democrats of Massachusetts denied any wrongdoing and said the letter to Morse “was not politically motivated” and “had nothing to do with any of our members’ professional ambitions or personal politics.” In its Aug. 9 letter shared on Twitter before the Intercept reported on its chat logs, the student group said suggestions that its decision to break ties with Morse had anything to do with his sexual orientation are “untrue, disingenuous, and harmful.”
In a statement, Rep. Neal said, “any implications that I or anyone from my campaign are involved are flat wrong and an attempt to distract from the issue at hand.”
Morse, however, maintains this was “a coordinated political attack with the intention of harming our campaign at a pivotal moment.”
“There were students that Congressman Neal involved that were trying to curry favor with a powerful incumbent to secure a job, and this goes to the height of the Massachusetts Democratic Party,” Morse told NBC News.
The Intercept reports revitalized his campaign by changing the narrative and fueling a surge of campaign donations. On Sunday, Morse appeared to acknowledge this by sharing a picture of himself on Twitter carrying a bag emblazoned with The Intercept’s logo: “New tote.”
The mayor and his message
Since declaring his candidacy last year, Morse has taken an anti-incumbent progressive message to voters in the Bay State’s first district, which covers part of the central Connecticut River Valley and the hilly western Berkshires area.
“On every issue Congressman Neal doesn’t understand the urgency of the moment,” Morse said. “From criminal justice, climate change, to the influence of money in politics.”
“He’s using his power to benefit the corporate and special interests that have invested millions in his campaign, and he’s not using his power to help the people, places, and communities in western and central Massachusetts,” Morse added.
His message echoes those that helped propel figures such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ritchie Torres to primary victories in solid blue districts, and one Morse hopes will win in his Sept. 1 primary.
A poll conducted this month put Morse within five points of Neal, with 13 percent of voters undecided — well within the striking distance that other Democratic challengers from the left had before winning in their primaries.
Morse, who at 31 is among the first of a generation of LGBTQ politicians who came of age using common dating apps such as OkCupid, Tinder and Grindr, said he “will never apologize for being young and gay and single and using gay dating apps and having consensual relations with other adult men.”
“I think my decision to stay in this race and fight and be open and honest about my life and my personal life I think will make it more likely that other young people, other queer people, other single people feel like they, too, can run for office,” he said.
A teacher in Texas has reportedly been placed on administrative leave after she allowed students to submit their pronouns and posted LGBT+ rights and Black Lives Matter images on her virtual classroom.
An image of Roma High School English teacher Taylor Lifka’s remote learning site was posted online Friday (August 21) by Marian Knowlton, a Republican candidate for Texas’ 31st district who took offence at her efforts to include trans students, women, students of colour and queer kids.
It shows an avatar of the teacher standing infront of posters advocating for Black Lives Matter and LGBT+ rights, among other human rights causes.
“Many of you know that I am concerned about what the children of Texas are learning in our schools,” Knowlton wrote.
The Republican said she had received the screenshot from a “concerned educator” shown it by a parent who had removed their child from Lifka’s English class.
Knowlton continued: “This is the virtual classroom that each student visits every day. They are welcomed by an LGBT ‘diversity is welcomed’ poster, a feminism poster that translates to ‘Girlfriend, your struggle is my struggle’, a photo of radical protesters (one of whom looks like an ANTIFA member) and propaganda that promotes the radical marxist movement ‘Black Lives Matter’.
“In addition, this teacher asks which pronoun they prefer! This is from a public school in one of the counties in House District 31!”
The Republican further sought to stir tensions by claiming: “Our education system has been radicalising our children for years and it continues to do so, from elementary through higher education. This is not an isolated occurrence, it is a national pattern.
“A concerted effort to teach children what to think, not how to think. Leftist indoctrination.”
According to The Monitor, Roma Independent School District (ISD) did not name Lifka, but said in a statement Tuesday (August 25): “After reviewing the complaints, the district is working closely with the teacher to find a resolution that will ensure all parties involved reach an outcome that best benefits the expectations of our parents and needs of our students.
“The teacher is not being reprimanded in any way for her work or decisions.”
However, a Change.org petition, which has now been signed by more than 15,000 people, is calling for the LGBT-inclusive Texas teacher to be reinstated.
The petition reads: “Please sign this petition to let the school district know that inclusivity and acceptance are not taboo ideas that deserve censorship; that high school students can and should be allowed to discuss the realities of the world instead of being sheltered inside a sanitised bubble; and that by reprimanding the teacher for trying to create a safe space for her students, the school is not being neutral, but is actively taking a stance that is antithetical to justice.”
