By Ann Rostow–
Where’s the Moon?
I was getting a head start on my column when I stumbled into a piece about how the people running the White House press office have decided to welcome social media news influencers. It was something like that, but what grabbed me was that one of the “new media reporters” was a conspiracy theorist named Kambree Nelson, who counts 625,000 followers on X.
Okay, that’s fine. They’re conservatives in addition to being out of their freaking minds, so let them sponsor some rightwing thinkers. But here’s what struck me. Kambree spent a week or so early last October speculating that the Moon had vanished. By implication, Kambree believed that the Biden administration, or some other nefarious liberal power player, had destroyed it.
“Has anyone seen the moon lately?” she asked on X. “I’ve been looking for 7 days.” Elizabeth, one of Kambree’s followers, expressed her concern as well. “I have not seen it at all,” she frowned. “It’s like it disappeared.”
“It has,” Kambree agreed. “Why is everyone silent about this? They are quiet about the white sun as well.”
(I gather that some people, Kambree included, believe that, somehow, the sun has changed from yellow to white.)
Another commentator, Andy, ventured that he had, in fact, just seen the Moon as well as the evening star, but Kambree was having none of it. “It’s not out,” she insisted. “None of my friends in 4 states can find it.”
Eventually, a community note explained that the Moon “can be difficult to observe in the days around a New Moon because only a small portion of the sunlight side faces Earth and because the Moon is above the horizon mostly during the daytime in this phase.”
I’m no Moon expert, and indeed this topic is bringing up memories of the time my college roommate and I signed up for “Rocks for Jocks” in order to fulfill our lab science requirement. Unfortunately, the easy A we expected turned into an incomplete when we realized the department had changed the class into a tough introduction to geology. Well, the Moon was involved somehow. I only remember passing around a piece of slate that we were supposed to identify. I found some chalk and managed to write, “Hi, My name is Slate,” on the sample, leading to much hilarity around the table as my classmates pulled out their magnifying glasses for lengthy examinations.
“Hmmm. Dr. Rostow, I believe we are looking at … slate.”
“Dr. Nolen, you may well be right. Dr. Solomon?”
I also learned that the name of our moon is “Moon,” which is like naming Earth “Planet,” or naming a dog “Dog.” Not unheard of, but really? Other moons have cool names like “Titan” or “Euripides” (I’m guessing here), but we named ours “Moon?”
That said, even I recognized that the Moon comes and goes, waxes and wanes, if you will. More importantly, I knew instinctively that were I ever to wonder where the Moon had gone, or why the sun looked pale, that the answer would not involve a nefarious evil genius with a giant ray gun or any kind of mystery for that matter. Instead, it would echo the lessons I might have learned had I made more of a point of attending my Geology 101 lectures.
Kambree, on the other hand, who seems to be 40-something with a teenaged daughter, appears to lack the capacity for rational thought. Yet she is one of presumably a small number of people who have been tapped by the White House as “new media” correspondents for the Trump administration. Orwellian doesn’t begin to describe it.
Hot Dogs
Over in Hungary, where the legislature recently banned Pride events, a satiric protest group called the Two-tailed Dog Party took to the streets of Budapest wearing all gray and denouncing colors. The group of several thousand carried banners saying things like: “Being Uniform Is Cool,” and, “Listen to Your Heart. Death to Colours.”
“I would strip [LGBT people] of their right to assembly, because they are all criminals,” protester Samuel Tar told Reuters. “They would like to express themselves, which is very harmful. Only I should be allowed to express myself, no one else.”
The Two-tailed Dog Party was founded twenty years ago, Reuters says. Last year, they actually won a local election, so who knows?
I didn’t intend to cover Hungary, just as I don’t intend to discuss another raid in Moscow, where last year some 42 police teams burst into gay-friendly clubs (I see here in LGBTQ Nation). But I couldn’t resist the Two-tailed Dog Party. I couldn’t resist the injection of humor into the dull darkness of the dictators’ world, a world that celebrates nothing funny, nothing interesting or beautiful, nothing sacred, or astonishing, or delicious. A world of tough, overcooked steak doused with catsup, made-for-TV wrestling, and kitschy accessories, run by smug dullards who want to impose their leaden gestalt on the rest of us.
And! While I was dabbling in GLBT news from Eastern Europe, I noticed that the last remaining “LGBT free zone” in Poland has been removed after six years of this type of anti-gay nonsense. The zones were symbolic, but they also served to illustrate why Poland was considered one of the most hostile countries in the EU as far as our community was concerned. That said, just as the zones were symbolic from the start—no actual laws targeted LGBT people in these areas—so the impact of their disappearance is equally vague.
This is just another reason I try to avoid GLBT news from the former Soviet Union. I’m always behind on the politics. There are confusing complications that I don’t like having to research. The EU rules are simply beyond me. I’ll see some banner headline about funds being cut off to some anti-gay country, and when I try to nail it down, I find it’s a preliminary proposal by some arcane division of a temporary EU agency that could possibly apply down the road to a small amount of money designated for cultural advancements. Or something like that. It’s impenetrable.
Let’s move on.
Bless Your Heart
Speaking of being behind on politics, I was not aware that the Lt. Governor of Virginia is a woman named “Winsome Earle-Sears.” I should have heard her name before. After all, she’s running for governor, and we all recall that the only interesting political race in the odd years is the Virginia governorship. She sounds like a character out of someone’s first novel, set in the low country, and covering four generations of two different families, one Black and one white. Winsome is the matriarch, who hides a racist heart under kind platitudes and sweet tea. I need a title with the word “Tide” or “Tides” in it.
She appears in our column this week (as a bit player) because Governor Glenn Youngkin has caused a big stir by demanding that the GOP candidate for Lt. Governor, John Reid, drop out of the race. Reid, who is openly gay, is accused of having an old Tumblr account, long since disabled, that included some nude shots, although not of Reid himself. Reid, in turn, claims that he had nothing to do with the racy posts, even though the account uses the same name that Reid had used in the past, albeit one that has been called “common” by Reid’s side.
Reid, who is in an eight-year committed partnership, refused to step down, and the GOP’s MAGA base in the state has rallied around him. It seems Reid, a conservative radio talk show host, is super Trumpy and everyone loves him. Wait, what?!
I was all set to support the beleaguered gay guy. After all, straight guys seem to get away with any number of risqué shenanigans these days, and this gay guy can’t even sidestep a few dick pics from back in the day? Not fair! But my distaste for MAGA is far deeper than even my community solidarity. I don’t really care what happens to John Reid, but I enjoy watching the Virginia GOP struggle with one of its own. Apparently, someone in Youngkin’s office may have lied in an affidavit about the matter; details have not been pursued by your faithful correspondent. But the bottom line is it’s a distraction for the Republicans at a time when momentum is shifting our way.
One Washington Post article suggested Youngkin, once a darling of the non-MAGA Republicans, has always lacked a fine political instinct. He danced around his relationship with Trump, to ill effect. He failed to win a GOP majority in the state legislature, in part by pushing a 15-week abortion ban. He tried unsuccessfully to build an arena and lure the D.C. area’s NBA and ice hockey teams, making a big show of the plan before being eventually blocked by lawmakers. And now, this! No one else has called for Reid to depart the scene, and Earle-Sears has (weakly) backed him as her running mate.
Equalize Me!
My wife just mentioned that The Equalizer was canceled. We have watched that show off and on, because we really like Queen Latifah. After all, she’s a sister! But we would like her regardless. The character I couldn’t stand was the smarmy daughter, Miss Goody Two Shoes, always ready with an irritating lecture. I mostly liked the Aunt Vi character, but she too had a holier-than-thou streak. Between Aunt Vi and Delilah, the show occasionally devolved into a treacle bath of old-fashioned values and Important Lessons Learned. Spare us!
And what else is new? The Million Moms are mad at a company that features an “intelligent donkey” named “Buck,” because the company is called something like “Smart Assets.” And yes, they make a joke about smart asses on their TV commercial, which is enough to send the Moms into outrage orbit.
I have a lot of legal news, but I’m going to skip the deep dive. You probably saw the High Court lean towards letting Oklahoma give public funds to a Catholic high school, one that emphasizes religious teaching. And we’ve got lots of other fights in the works, mainly our challenges to various Executive Orders. In particular, we await final court decisions on whether or not there will be a transgender military ban, especially given the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding Trump’s order on this, as the litigation continues to play out.
And finally, do you remember the former Rowan County, Kentucky, head clerk Kim Davis? She was the one who refused to marry two men after the High Court legalized marriage equality in 2015. Reveling in the press spotlight, she staged various protests and went to jail for a couple of days before allowing another clerk to issue the license. What followed was a series of lawsuits and appeals, and now, ten years down the road, Davis has appealed her latest loss to the Supreme Court.
The judicial merry-go-round left Davis owing some $50,000 to one of the several couples she refused to serve. She appealed this decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and was denied. She asked the Sixth Circuit to reconsider the case, and the judges refused. Now, she wants the nine justices to interfere with the right to marriage that their former colleagues decided was a constitutional dictate.
Will the Court overturn their marriage ruling? No.
But will they shave something off the edges? Recall that Justice Kennedy acknowledged that people with qualms about same-sex marriage and would “continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be condoned,” or something like that, weasel words that have been picked up and slapped in our faces often enough by conservative judges. Would the current Court stitch a little loophole into the Obergefell decision, allowing “people who adhere to religious doctrines” free rein to discriminate against gays and gay couples? That’s an open question.
Hopefully, they’ll decide not to take the case to begin with. I will read the petition and report back next time.
arostow@aol.com
GLBT Fortnight in Review
Published on May 8, 2025
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