[cw: self-harm, transphobia] Alabama Mayor Commits Suicide After Conservative Website Publishes Photos of Him Dressed as a Transgender Woman
[cw: self-harm, transphobia] Alabama Mayor Commits Suicide After Conservative Website Publishes Photos of Him Dressed as a Transgender Woman
A conservative news outlet shared photos of Smiths Station Mayor Bubba Copeland alleging he was living a "secret life" as a transgender woman.
Basically every welfare check story I hear is either "person was fine and the check was in effect harrassment" or "police presence escalated the situation to a potentially or ultimately lethal extent."
There’s some selection bias there.
Welfare checks are common. A cop checked on my grandma, who lived ~500 mi awa from me, any time I was concerned about her not responding to my calls. No questions asked. I’m sure there are similar requests made all the time, you just don’t hear about them.
struggling to understand what "dressed as a trans woman" means when somebody as ignorant about gender as international business times says it
Worst interpretation its just an extra insulting way, best interpretation I can think of is they phrased it like that since he apparently had social media accounts that he posted the images to with the persona of a trans woman, so in literal terms he was dressing as a trans woman.
Fucking hell. Cw and NSFW tag though please
Nominative determinism aside, that's Greek tragedy levels of sad. In a better world they'd not have been warped by chuddery to the point they felt they had to do this.
The really sad thing is, they probably would have been accepted by the community still.
Conservative communities can be vicious if you're an lgbt teen, but are surprisingly accepting when it's a respected member of the community that they'd have to ostracise and the outing is being done by some asshole outsider rag.
EDIT: changed to neutral gender pronouns since we don't know their internal identity.
It's hard to know. Sometimes they'll bend over backwards to support someone they've always considered part of the family, change their minds ot make an exception for one of their own, but other times even the "supportive" people are only supportive insofar that they'll forgive you if you stop being queer. They called her actions "unbiblical" so who knows. She was being pursued by cops in the end, so that probably escalated matters.
Being chased by an armed gang that hates the thing you're having a mental crisis with rarely helps matters.
I like to think there's enough of a vestige of Alabama Communalism left to make them embrace him, but it's hard to know as you say.
Is this a website with a major focus on men being non heterosexual? Look at the suggested atricles.
I highly reccomend the Seeking Derrangements episodes about randy mcnally. It is a lot less bleak than this story.
Randy was outed by pro lgbt people who wanted to draw attention to his hypocrisy on taking action against lgbt people to hopefully stop it. He is still alive and pretty nuch fine but living a bit more honestly.
Bubba was outed by what seems like anti lgbt people. After being the target of revenge porn and harassment, bubba either shot themselves or was executed by the police. So the dirtbags got a prize: dead queer. An example for others.
Thank you
some internet atheist blogger did some digging to find evidence of ted haggard-like hypocrisy and couldn't find any:
https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/does-this-drag-loving-trans-pretending
tho I don't like that the author thinks it's clear that copeland was "pretending" when it seems possible that he was experiencing real gender incongruence and just didn't feel able to identify as a woman outside of an online persona
fwiw, the church copeland belonged to was part of the alabama cooperative baptist fellowship. I searched them to see if there were rancid anti-trans remarks from them and didn't find anything from the specific church copeland was a pastor at, but these two articles showed up
https://baptistnews.com/article/cbf-church-booted-from-southern-baptist-association-for-embracing-lgbtq-members/ - a CBF church in georgia getting kicked out of some other baptist group for welcoming lgbt members
https://www.christianpost.com/news/cbf-church-ordains-first-known-transgender-pastor-in-its-history.html - a CBF church in indiana having a trans pastor
I don’t know how to feel about this? It’s like a SS officer getting outed as Jewish. I mean you reap what you sow.
I think it's pretty fucking shitty to make that comparison. Unless the entire story is totally fabricated, it seems pretty likely to me that this was a closeted trans woman living her life in chud central. Is there any evidence she perpetuated any significant hate towards queer people? Because unless you can (and even if so tbh), it seems like you're just victim blaming a queer person for trying to survive in a small Alabama town, and ultimately failing.
A closeted trans woman who became a registered republican, a pastor, a mayor, and met Donald Trump. Even if she never said anything homophobic or transphobic in her position as a community leader, which I fucking doubt, she perpetuated transphobia with the choices she made in her life and career and ate the consequences of it like how she ate the bullet. No sympathy whatsoever.