How extremist Christian theology is driving the right-wing assault on democracy
Progressive policies and positions are supposed to be rooted in reality and hard evidence. But that’s not always the case when it comes to the culture wars that have such an enormous impact on our politics — especially not since the unexpected evangelical embrace of Donald Trump in 2016, culminating in the “pro-life” death cult of anti-vaccine, COVID-denying religious leaders. If this development perplexed many on the left, it was less surprising to a small group of researchers who have been studying the hardcore anti-democratic theology known as dominionism that lies behind the contemporary Christian right, and its far-reaching influence over the last several decades.
-https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/extremist-christians/
A sad and complicated truth is probably no match for an exquisitely useful lie.
Facts were found sufficient consistent with the charges of forced sodomy and forced fellatio.
The victim, who had been communicating with the boy prior to the incident, met the assailant in a bathroom where the assaults occurred in a handicapped stall.
-https://loudounnow.com/2021/10/26/teen-convicted-in-sexual-assault-of-stone-bridge-student/
The teens had “sexually charged conversations,” and had engaged in consensual sexual relations twice in weeks prior, in a bathroom at the school.
-https://www.insidenova.com/headlines/loudoun-judge-finds-teen-guilty-of-sexual-assaulting-girl-in-school-bathroom/article_eb72d3ee-35fc-11ec-8a1d-b3ed9d74b61a.html
…Smith said that his ninth-grade daughter had been sexually assaulted in a school bathroom by a boy wearing a skirt. Smith was opposed to a proposed policy allowing trans kids to use bathrooms aligned with their gender identities, believing it made girls like his daughter vulnerable.
But this week, during a juvenile court hearing, a fuller picture of Smith’s daughter’s ordeal emerged. She suffered something atrocious. It had nothing at all to do, however, with trans bathroom policies. Instead, like many women and girls, she was a victim of relationship violence.
Smith’s daughter testified that she’d previously had two consensual sexual encounters with her attacker in the school bathroom. On the day of her assault, they’d agreed to meet up again. “The evidence was that the girl chose that bathroom, but her intent was to talk to him, not to engage in sexual relations,” Biberaj, whose office prosecuted the case, told me. The boy, however, expected sex and refused to accept the girl’s refusal. As the The Washington Post reported, she testified, “He flipped me over. I was on the ground and couldn’t move and he sexually assaulted me.”
The boy was indeed wearing a skirt, but that skirt didn’t authorize him to use the girls’ bathroom. As Amanda Terkel reported in HuffPost, the school district’s trans-inclusive bathroom policies were approved only in August, more than two months after the assault. This was not, said Biberaj, someone “identifying as transgender and going into the girls’ bathroom under the guise of that.”
-https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/opinion/loudoun-county-trans.html
GOP Distorts Virginia Bathroom Sexual Assault Case For Political Gain
Despite Republican rhetoric, the facts show it had absolutely nothing to do with transgender-inclusive bathroom policies.
-https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gop-virginia-loudoun-county-bathroom-assault-transgender_n_61784469e4b093143210f8d6
But the facts of the case don’t line up with their fearmongering, as the trial on Monday made clear.
“It’s not about Virginia. It’s not about this case,” the prosecutor, Loudoun County Commonwealth’s Attorney Buta Biberaj, told HuffPost. “It’s all about how they’re taking these incidents and unfortunate circumstances, creating disinformation, done solely for the purpose of them promoting their agenda. And that is unfortunate because we have real people who are living these experiences.”
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