(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Florida rep. calls trans activists 'demons' and 'imps,' proves Christian conservatives are bigots [1] ['Daily Kos Staff', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-10 One of the more mind-bending aspects of conservative anti-trans, anti-education, and anti-free school lunch rhetoric is how many of these conservatives side with the Emperor in “Star Wars” and do not seem to understand why everyone is aghast at them. Barnaby began by saying he was “looking at society today, and it’s like watching an ‘X-Men’ movie.” Okaaaaaay. “It’s like we have mutants, living among us, on planet Earth.” Jesus H. Christ, man. He then proceeded to mix and match his comic book characters by saying that there are “people that are happy to display themselves as if they were mutants from another planet.” Then he blurted out, “This is the planet Earth.” (Wait until he hears about how there are, like, mostly non-Christians living on “the planet Earth!”) If this was not offensive enough, Barnaby added more anger and volume to his voice, screeching, “When God created man, male, and woman, female. I’m a proud Christian conservative Republican. I’m not on the fence. Not on the fence.” Clearly, dude. He proceeded to talk about how there is “so much darkness in the world,” and also “so much evil,” and only people like Barnaby are willing to “address the evil, the dysphoria, dysfunction.” He then launched into a boring but wildly offensive version of “The Excorcist”, saying, “The Lord rebukes you Satan, and all of your demons and all of your imps,” which is sort of a bastardization of Zachariah. Barnaby then went from being generally offensive and unintelligent to truly abhorrent, chastising the “parade before us—that’s right, I called you demons and imps, who come and parade before us and pretend that you are part of this world.” Mr. Webster Barnaby is a truly small man. A small, scared little man. x Florida Republican Rep. Webster Barnaby directly compared trans people to mutants in X-Men and called the trans people, including children, present in the room "demons and imps." This was during debate for HB1421 that would criminalize trans people using bathrooms. pic.twitter.com/y5VsCKeAfJ — Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) April 10, 2023 Attorney Alejandra Caraballo points out that this sort of open vitriol is the definition of discrimination, which is technically unconstitutional. ”It's extremely difficult to prove unconstitutional animus in legislation and this Rep. just managed to do it explicitly on the record in legislative debate. He may have singlehandedly helped prove discriminatory intent to get it enjoined in court,” Caraballo tweeted. But as we have seen time and time again, brains aren’t a big thing with right-wing, anti-trans activists like Barnaby. As many people have pointed out, the only thing Barnaby got right is that the trans community long ago gravitated to the story of the “X-Men,” like many marginalized folks before them. There’s even a very old meme about it that speaks right to Webster’s anxieties. x X-Men? There is LITERALLY a meme for that pic.twitter.com/kZ7OHtOArw — Aqua: Guardian of the Cosmos (@fluttershyyay49) April 10, 2023 Here is the opening of the 2000 film “X-Men.” It’s hard to imagine how Republicans like Barnaby keep missing the grade school-level moral of the simplest stories. RELATED STORY: Florida lawmakers pass despicable bill targeting asylum-seeking kids, DeSantis expected to sign [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/10/2163217/-Florida-rep-calls-trans-activists-demons-and-imps-proves-Christian-conservatives-are-bigots Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/