Laura Ann Carleton, a 66-year-old shopkeeper who owned a clothing store in Cedar Glen, California, was shot and killed after confronting a man who pulled down the rainbow Pride flag displayed outside her store. Carleton reportedly made disparaging remarks before opening fire with a handgun. He fled but was later shot dead by police. Carleton was regarded as an ally of the local LGBTQ+ community, even though she did not identify as such herself. Her death has sparked tributes from friends and activists who note rising incidents of violence and harassment targeting the LGBTQ+ community across the U.S. in recent months. Notably, over 350 such attacks have occurred from June 2022 to April 2023 alone according to recent reports.
As a lesbian of the much maligned Boomer generation (same as Laura Ann Carleton), I want to express my profound gratitude to her and to all our proud allies who have stood up for us, stood with us, marched with us, and sometimes taken a bullet for us. Without allies like her I would not have been able to marry my partner of 38 years, in many places would not have been able to buy a car with her or rent/buy a home with her. While I do not want to diminish the fact that life is far from perfect for LGBTQ+, and American society has been sliding backwards in many areas, today I want to honor courageous heroes like Laura Ann Carleton. Always remember her name and deeds, for she was a blessing among us.
I’m getting so tired of these knuckle dragging mouth breathers dragging us back to the middle ages. We could have been heading for Star Trek yet we’re sliding towards something akin to The Handmaid’s Tale. Who in their right mind chooses the latter over the former?
Scared people for the most part. While I’m not American myself I grew up in an adjacent (Calvinistic Baptist) worldview and I cannot emphasise enough how much fear plays a role in that worldview. It’s pretty much a socially transmissible anxiety disorder in my experience, the evangelical worldview is ironically very well evolved to spread from one person to another because it directly hijacks your scepticism by upping the stakes too high for your brain to process it properly. You’re not allowed to express the fear though because that would be evidence you’re not really saved.
I’m not making excuses for them at all, I mean I’m very aggressively pro-LGBT rights and I grew up in that world so it’s definitely possible to escape it. What I am saying though in the spirit of ‘know your enemy’ is that in many cases these people from age five upwards will have been taught they are utterly disgusting in the eyes of god and deserve after they die to forever be tortured gruesomely beyond the power of English words to express because they were born human and are therefore guilty of original sin. These people see themselves as having been measured by the supreme creator of the universe and been found personally, individually beneath contempt. The only way you can escape your completely just fate of being eternally consciously tortured is if God predestined you to be saved and you’re one of the limited few that Jesus’s sacrifice actually applied to, in this world most of humanity exists only to be burned for the glory of God and if you ever fall away from the worldview you were never saved to begin with.
Again, I’m in no way excusing their bigotry which I loathe especially deeply having seen it at closer quarters than most. This is what we’re dealing with though from a purely practical point of view, if you or I are wrong then we’re just wrong but if these people are wrong then they will suffer a fate many times worse than death. This is why encounters with evangelicals are really intense for the most part, and why they’re so needlessly horrible from a secular perspective. While they’d never admit it in a million years the ideology is pretty trauma-driven for many of its adherents whether it’s the fear of hell, fear of losing their entire community even though they don’t believe any more, fear of rejection over some stupid theological difference (this lot make the revolutionary left look broad-church by comparison when it comes to factionalism) or any of the other fears that sound completely insane outside of that community but subjectively are very real.
A few are the people who think they’ll end up near the top of such distopias. But mostly the ones being manipulated via fear into heading us towards these distopias.
It’s sad people are so afraid of consenting adults loving each other. And it’s worst others flame and wield these fears to gain power and wealth.
I agree with you but technically speaking Earth from Star Trek went through very similar growing pains before finding their utopia.
“It’s not that they don’t care. It’s that they’ve given up.” This was how Commanding Officer Benjamin Sisko, played by Avery Brooks, described early 21st-century Americans in an episode from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. When it aired in 1995, “Past Tense” spoke to contemporary concerns about homelessness by telling a story set in 2024—the near future for viewers, but the distant past for characters. In the two-part episode, Sisko and two of his companions from the U.S.S. Defiant find themselves stranded in San Francisco, where they’re reminded that the federal government had once set up a series of so-called “Sanctuary Districts” in a nationwide effort to seal off homeless Americans from the general population. Stuck in 2024, Sisko, who is black—along with his North African crewmate Dr. Julian Bashir and the fair-skinned operations officer Jadzia Dax—must contend with unfamiliar racism, classism, violence, and Americans’ apparent apathy toward human suffering.
Who in their right mind chooses the latter over the former?
The people who think they will end up as Commanders and Wives as opposed to Handmaids, Marthas, Jezebels, soldiers or Econopeople. Handmaid’s Tale society is a lot more reachable than Star Trek’s within their lifespans.
I hope she or someone else had security footage to catch this asshole
I assumed America before I even read it.
As an American, it’s good our worst behaviors aren’t replicable elsewhere.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/world/europe/lucy-letby-sentence-nurse-babies-killed.html
Sorry, but America doesn’t have the stranglehold on “worst behavior”. Not even close.
‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
But, like all American culture, I fear this is spreading its influence far and wide too.
Why aren’t they naming the killer? It’s been days.
To what end? The backstory will follow the same basic pattern it always does.
Probably white, almost certainty male and definitely far-right. Increasingly radicalised by online content. Bought a gun because he legally could and carried it around everywhere for 6 months, hoping for a chance to shoot somebody. Eventually lost control of his delicate little emotions and killed someone.
Because naming killers in situations like this encourage others to do the same.
