By Ann Rostow –
Death in Paradise
I couldn’t decide where to start today, but since we’ve been reading about Pete Hegseth ordering U.S. military personnel to make sure every person aboard those boats in the Caribbean are killed, let’s start with him. No, we’re not discussing the war crimes and murders taking place in the islands. We’re talking about “Scouting America,” née Boy Scouts of America, who have reimagined themselves as an organization that not only welcomes gay men and boys, but also opens its arms to girls and transgender kids.
According to a draft memo to lawmakers, leaked to NPR, Hegseth is about to withdraw military participation in the Scouts’ quadrennial Jamboree, even though said participation is legally required by Congress. It is customary for the military to provide logistical support for the event, as well as show off tanks and planes and perform aerial stunts. According to NPR, however, the Secretary of Defense is allowed to skip the Jamboree if he decides somehow that helping out at the Scouts’ big bash would be “detrimental to national security.” Indeed, Hegseth seems prepared to do just that, telling Congress that the retooled Scouts were fostering “gender confusion,” and are not living up to their mission to “cultivate masculine values.”
The relationship between the military and the Scouts is also a two-way street. You can imagine that an Eagle Scout, chest full of badges and ribbons, might find himself attracted to a career in the services and the military recruits in the Scouts. In another memo produced by NPR, Navy Secretary John Phelan warned that dissing the Scouts could prove shortsighted:
“Passive support to Scouting America … serves as a crucial recruiting and community engagement tool for the [Navy],” Phelan wrote. “Prohibition of access could be detrimental to recruitment and accession efforts across the department.”
I guess a Trumpy spokesperson complained that Hegseth’s unsent memo was “predecisional.” I can’t recall who said that and I’m running late today so I won’t look it up, but it reminds me of the football sportscasters who get so excited they trip over their own tongues and just make up words out of whole cloth.
“Holy cow, Roger! There goes Evans with his legs! He has such comfortability with this offense!”
Fired Gay FBI Trainee Fights Back
I have several updates to previous stories on my list today. Remember the FBI man fired for having a Pride flag in his office two years ago? He’s suing the FBI, the Defense Department, Kash Patel, and Pam Bondi on constitutional grounds. And how about the Texas A&M professor summarily fired for referring to a non-binary purple unicorn in a class on children’s literature? She could be reinstated. Or not. Then there’s the weird story about the lesbian astronaut, whose lover accused her of transferring funds out of their accounts from space. I have the latest!
The big one here is the FBI trainee, David Maltinsky, who filed an 18-page complaint in D.C. federal court on November 26. First of all, I was vague on some details in my original report; Maltinsky was a civilian assistant in the FBI’s Los Angeles office, starting in 2009 when he was not yet 20. After the Pulse shooting, which killed 49 people in Orlando in 2016, Maltinsky volunteered to run an outreach program for the bureau, and, in 2019, he won the Director’s Award for Outstanding Service in Diversity and Inclusion. In 2021, it was Maltinsky who lent his own rainbow flag to the field office where it was raised for Pride month. Later, the assistant head of the Los Angeles field office presented the flag back to Maltinsky, who put it on the wall of his office space, along with trinkets and whathaveyou.
After Trump was elected, someone in the office complained about the flag, and Maltinsky checked with his supervisor who gave him the green light to keep it up. In June, Maltinsky left California to train as an FBI agent at Quantico. He finished 16 of 19 weeks when he was summarily fired by Kash Patel because of the “political signage” he displayed at his desk in Los Angeles. The signage, as we just noted, was formally returned to him by the FBI and approved for display by an FBI supervisor.
Maltinsky’s lawsuit alleges violations of his First Amendment rights to free expression and accuses the authorities of viewpoint discrimination. While the “political signage” implied by the rainbow flag was grounds for dismissal, various rightwing symbols were fine, including something described in the complaint as “Punisher iconography.” I just checked, and the Punisher is a violent vigilante comic character who sports a skull on his chest and kills bad guys. The Punisher’s skull has been adopted by those in the military and law enforcement who want to project a hyper-masculine tough guy image, and, as much as the rainbow is associated with left-wing politics, so the Punisher’s ties are to the political far right. Kash Patel even gives out a challenge coin with the Punisher skull, which would count as political signage in my book.
Maltinsky also charges the defendants with violation of his right to Equal Protection due to the FBI’s obvious discrimination against gay men and lesbians. In an interview, Maltinsky confirmed that the news of his firing traveled fast and that his fellow GLBT FBI employees hustled to put away any sign of their sexual orientation, a retreat back to the closet that we wouldn’t have thought possible just a year ago.
Useless Tips Department
Before we see what happened with the astronaut, I just scanned a New York Times article about the warning signs for heart attacks. I get these health-related emails and texts all the time and ignore them. But you know me. If it has a New York Times byline, I’m reading it!
It turned out that the article was written in October, but, for some reason, it popped onto my reading horizon just now, when I learned that, according to Dr. Seth Martin of Johns Hopkins, the most obvious signs are chest pains.
“Some people may interpret those symptoms as heartburn,” said Martin. But heartburn tends to have “a burning quality, which is different than a pressure, squeezing, or fullness,” he explained. But those differences aren’t “a foolproof test,” he noted unhelpfully. If the pain lasts for a few minutes, or repeatedly goes away and comes back, the Times explains, Martin tells us to “take that very seriously and seek help.”
Another doctor reports that unexplained tiredness is another bad omen. This doctor’s own father had a heart attack and died in 1984, and his symptom was fatigue. And then it’s back to Martin, who says that over 20 percent of heart attacks have no symptoms at all, or might look like the flu or indigestion. Thanks, Doc.
I had two middle-aged male friends who cheated death earlier this year by going to the hospital (at their husbands’ insistence) where it became clear that they had had a heart attack or were in the middle of one. Both guys had classic symptoms, but both were reluctant to seek help. As for me and my female friends, our symptoms are even less recognizable than those of the guys. Do you think we’re calling 911 for heartburn? Hell no, we’re hitting the Tums bottle and probably kicking the bucket in our sleep. Because we’re inexplicably tired as well.
Long Road to Justice
Having just refreshed my memory, I’m not sure the lesbian astronaut story is that big of a deal. But it’s too late to stop now. The moving finger has writ. As I now recall, the astronaut, Colonel Anne McClain, was on the International Space Station for a period of months in 2019, during which time she did some routine banking on behalf of herself and her ex, Summer Heather Worden. The women’s finances were intertwined, and McClain was the one in charge, but although McClain had all the passwords and was not doing anything unusual, Worden accused her of infiltrating her personal bank account for nefarious purposes. It was pretty clear from the start that Worden was a Lesbian Behaving Badly, which is why it became a non-story.
Now, however, Worden has pled guilty to some felony or other and will face a sentence of up to five years and/or a fine of up to $250,000. I gather she admitted that she lied back in 2020, which makes us all wonder what the hell has been going on for the last six years. Has she been in jail? Has she been stalling? Did people just forget about her? Do we care? That’s the real question and our answer is no.
And, in our final update, a committee at Texas A&M has ruled that the university violated its own procedures when it summarily fired Melissa McCoul, a lecturer in the English department who was videoed during a discussion of a non-binary children’s lit character. One of the students, a simpering idiot if you watch the video, points out that, since our President Donald Trump has ordered that there only be two genders, the teacher might be breaking the law by discussing the unicorn? Note that there are no laws against teaching about non-binary fictional characters and no such policies that would forbid such a thing at A&M or any other university. As such, the in-house committee noted that McCoul was essentially fired without cause, and should be reinstated.
McCoul would not have been fired in the first place were it not for a rabid state legislator who saw the video, spread it around, and led the Governor of Texas to insist that McCoul lose her post. Eventually, in a series of events that elude me, the president of the university was seemingly forced to fire McCoul, but then resigned suddenly without much explanation. That is another mystery we will not be pursuing.
Since the committee recommendation is advisory, it’s not clear what will happen. The new president, Tommy Williams, will decide shortly. Meanwhile, McCoul is suing the school, and I imagine the committee report will add fuel to her fire.
Did you hear the one about the Aggie who tried to sky dive but was having trouble with the ripcord? He was plummeting to Earth when he saw another Aggie shooting past him going up.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Do you know anything about parachutes?”
“No!” shouted the other Aggie. “Do you know anything about gas stoves?”
My mother told me that one. She and my father taught at the University of Texas for over thirty years, which is where my Longhorn loyalty comes from. You may have noticed Texas beat the undefeated rival Texas A&M football team last Friday. What? You didn’t notice? I’m astonished. When my mother died, UT Austin lowered all its flags to half-staff.
And why does a grown man still call himself “Tommy?”
Marriage Equality Creeping Into Eastern Europe
I was going to expound on a ruling from the European Court of Something Something, that said all EU countries must recognize the status of same-sex couples, whether married or in a civil union, even if such a status is not available at home. It’s a European version of the 2014 Windsor ruling in the U.S., which struck the Defense of Marriage Act and made our marriages legal throughout the country regardless of state law.
But, this being the European Union, the ruling is not necessarily legally binding, which is why I’m not bothering to take it seriously or to take the professional care that might require, um, looking up the actual name of the Court. I’ve mentioned before that I find EU rules and regulations a little Kafka-esque, although this is to be expected in a patchwork quilt of nations versus a union of associated states.
Okay, it’s the European Court of Justice, ruling in a case out of Poland where two men got married in Germany but could not register as married at home in Poland. Reuters called the decision “binding” in one sentence, but elsewhere said the men’s lawyer “thought” the ruling was binding and said they would see what the Polish authorities did with it. I shouldn’t be so cynical. This Court outshines ours at the moment, and even non-binding decisions settle into law in time.
GLBT Fortnight in Review
Published on December 4, 2025
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