A small-town Alabama pastor and mayor killed himself Friday, days after a local conservative news website published a story that included photos of him wearing women’s clothing and makeup.
F.L. “Bubba” Copeland, who was the mayor of Smiths Station and the pastor at First Baptist Church in Phenix City, shot himself in front of police during a welfare check, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office said.
Copeland’s private life was exposed Wednesday by the conservative blog 1819 News, which was once owned by the right-wing Alabama Policy Institute and whose top editor is a former Breitbart News contributor.
I thought it was established that they didn’t talk shit about people in public. Did I miss something?
No. You’re seeing people who only see the world in black-and-white or us-vs-them. It’s extremely unsettling for people, like myself, who rely on people like that for support. It’s why it is that if you hang out in LGBT spaces - especially for people who are trans, enby and/or a-spec (asexual, aromantic and/or agender) - you’ll see memes about false allies; people who claim to be allies, but only because your political views align with their own. Because if your own views or philosophies don’t align with theirs then they’ll drop you like a rock.
Again, I haven’t looked deeply into the mayor’s prior political views, I’ve mainly looked through articles covering their death, so it’s totally possible that they themselves held bigoted views. Nor have I been able to figure out if they held office before they started expressing themselves online (it looks like they deleted their accounts before they died), because it’s totally possible they held office before discovering themselves and didn’t know how to get out of their position (inb4 “just move lul” or “just swap political parties, lul ecks dee”; if the former were that easy I wouldn’t still be stuck in Texas, and the latter is a great way to get yourself killed in our current political climate). However, to effectively say they deserved it for being trans and republican while stopping just short of saying such, really reeks of disgusting false-ally bullshit.
Edit: actually, after looking through some of their posts, at best they’re just shit-stirrers, at worst they’re just hateful, angry, and taking it out on everyone else.
Hilariously ironic that this guy was literally a false ally and you’re rushing to defend him.
Not everyone who is LGBTQ is your ally and not everyone who thinks you’re a complete idiot is your enemy.
No one ever said they deserved this for “being trans” thats simply not true. In fact no one ever said this guy deserved it.
How is that relevant. They were actively participating in a political party that is trying to oppress trans people. Nothing else here is relevant.
This is my point. Being LGBTQ doesn’t give this guy a pass. Others seem to think it does.
There are tons of gay and trans Republicans.
They are just as shitty as the straight ones.
This is the key takeaway from this whole thing. This guy would rather kill himself than be seen as part of the LGBT community. A community which their own experiences told them would be welcoming and understanding and would have been.
They could have been welcomed with open arms and they could have rejected republicanism and conservatism. Instead at the very end they made their choice to literally end their life instead of being known as part of the LGBT community.
This was an easy choice for this guy. There was no grey area. I’m not sure why other people are pretending there was. No one forced him. Hell in a month no one would have given a shit.
When Republicans start coming for the trans kids like they did with the gay kids…how are you going to tell the difference between the ones holding bats cuz of peer pressure or cuz they want to?
