Moms for Liberty cofounder Bridget Ziegler used to seek the spotlight. She was behind Ron DeSantis when he signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill she loudly championed (second adult blonde from the right). The bill’s statehouse sponsor, former Rep. Joe Harding, was also looking on (directly behind the governor).
Harding, a squinty fascist who spent his short political career yapping about his Christian values, has since resigned and been sentenced to prison after the DOJ busted him for small business loan scams. And as everyone now knows, Ziegler’s husband, FL GOP Chair Christian Ziegler, is being investigated for rape, and both bible-thumping Zieglers told investigators they’d had three-way sex with the accuser in the past.
The Moms for Liberty extremist organization is trying to distance itself from Bridget Ziegler, but at least one out of state chapter has adopted a less embarrassing brand name due to the Ziegler scandal fallout. This week, Bridget Ziegler resigned her gig at the conservative Leadership Institute think-tank, where she was in charge of training other religious kooks to take over school boards.
But so far, she’s hanging onto her Sarasota County School Board seat. She’s also still a DeSantis-appointed member of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight Board, which the governor created to punish Disney for criticizing the Don’t Say Gay law.
The school board meets next week. The tourism board met yesterday. Since this scandal is getting wall-to-wall coverage in Florida, lots of people wondered if Bridget Ziegler would show up in person to the board meeting as usual. Nope — she chickened out.
Ziegler phoned in on Zoom, appearing as a disembodied “BZ” on a screen. The other DeSantis-aligned religious fanatics and grifters on the board were present and ignored the BZ elephant in the room.
Instead, they stuck to their talking points, yammering about Disney’s operational fuckups to provide cover for the governor’s blatant attacks on free speech. But in the public comments portion of the meeting, a hero emerged in the person of Celebration, Florida resident Debra McDonald.
After noting that the governor has called on accused rapist Christian Ziegler to resign as FL GOP chair, McDonald took up the issue the board ignored: (Daily Beast)
“Bridget should follow,” McDonald continued. “Mrs. Ziegler has not made Florida a better place. She is the face of the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ revolution, which brought this board to where it is, to this place today, and has caused untold harm in our classrooms and in our communities…”
“(Bridget Ziegler’s) role in demonizing members of the LGBTQ community is hurting the state, while she has apparently been a part of the letter B in that group,” McDonald wryly observed.
Then she addressed BZ directly.
“Bridget, you need to do what is best for the greater good,” McDonald said. “We live in a free Florida, not an autocratic pseudo-Christian dictatorship.”
McDonald again spoke to the board as a whole.
“What Mrs. Ziegler does privately with other consenting adults is no more our business than it is the behavior of the other consenting adults,” McDonald said. “It is the rank hypocrisy of attacking others for what she personally practices that should disqualify her for a position of public trust.”
With that, McDonald returned to her seat in the audience.
Well done, Ms. McDonald!
I hope Sarasota residents will show up at next week’s school board meeting and follow McDonald’s example. Both Zieglers need to be hounded out of public life, and if the husband is found guilty of the crimes he’s accused of, he should go to jail for a long time. Enough with these spiteful fucking hypocrites.
Is it possible that this massive scandal implicating the state’s GOP establishment and its AstroTurf activists, combined with DeSantis’s humiliating flop on the national stage, will inspire Florida Republicans to rethink their approach? Not until they start losing elections, and they’ve been winning since the turn of the century.
That said, normies are getting an extremely unflattering close-up of the state’s culture warriors. And the hard-right state supreme court is expected to clear the way for the governor’s six-week abortion ban to take effect any day now.
It’s hard for a Democrat to be optimistic about Florida politics, so I’m a pessimist as a defense mechanism. But I will say it’s rare to see the stage set so completely for voter backlash to party overreach. We shall see.
Open thread.
Baud
Definitely a B of some sort.
Chief Oshkosh
Have local press started noting that BeeZee has been busy being bi? Have they asked her why it’s OK for her to be bi, but not others? Have they asked her whether her bi-ness has led her to groom children for a “bisexual lifestyle?”
Percysowner
We have a sane judge in Texas A Texas judge ruled that a pregnant woman who sued the state seeking an abortion can legally terminate her pregnancy . The judge is female, which may have helped. The Attorney General has not responded so far, although I’m sure he will try to force her to carry the child, watch it die slowly and painfully AND lose her ability to ever have another child.
Geminid
The House vote on censuring Jamaal Bowman over the fire alarm incident was 214 for, 191 against, with 15 Democrats and 24 Republicans listed as “not voting.” I’m not sure if these last were present or skipped the session. Maybe some of both.
Three Democrats voted Yea. One report says they were Chris Pappas (NH), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA), and Jahana Hayes (CT).
coin operated
The Republican Party writ large
Miss Bianca
@Geminid: WTF with these Democrats voting to censure the guy over a fucking mistake.
Sister Golden Bear
Moms For Three-ways?
Trivia Man
@Sister Golden Bear: She’s giving orgies a bad reputation
Chat Noir
Yes!
I’m more Christian than these people and I’m an atheist.
Chetan Murthy
@Miss Bianca: “For my friend, everything; for my enemies, the law” — Oscar R. Benavides, President of Peru from 1933 to 1939
It was a fricken’ misdemeanor and he already pled guilty just to get it over with.
Old School
Pantone Color of the Year is…
<drum roll>
Peach Fuzz!
RaflW
Can we encourage Ms. McDonald of Celebration, FL to run for her local school board? She sounds awesome.
Jackie
@Geminid:
@Miss Bianca:
I want to hear their explanations.
RaflW
@Miss Bianca: A few of these people have permanent knee injuries from living in a defensive crouch.
Baud
@Jackie:
Perez is in a swingy district. Not sure about the others.
Ruckus
Rethuglicans have, for most/all of my decades, very often offer/pass laws that limit what humans can do, when they are things they do themselves. I’m thinking that it’s possible the word hypocrite was coined to describe them. I call it “Freedom for me, Fuck You.”
Chetan Murthy
@Ruckus: or as they say, “Not Perfect, Just Forgiven” [spit]
Geminid
@Miss Bianca: Reps. Pappas, Gluesenkamp Perez and Hayes will probably explain their votes before the day is out.
Rep. Bowman has a bigger problem than this censure vote. Two days ago, Westchester County Executive George Latimer announced he is running against Bowman for the 16th CD nomination. Latimer’s supporters say he will win because he is such a hard worker. Bowman’s supporters say Bowman’s bold progressive stances will prevail; one even said that Latimer will end up in “the dustbin of history,” which I thought was kind of quaint.
One thing observers agree on is that the redistricting proposed by Albany Democrats could help or hurt either man’s chances, if the plan can make it past the courts.
scav
Even if not personally attracted to the other woman (and thus not bisexual! praise and holiness be!) but participating in the debauched threesome in holy righteousness and correct total submission to her husband as a humble wife should (lying back and thinking of England), she’s still abetting and enabling her husband in sin. Fluffing the pillows of lechery.
Geminid
@Jackie: I’m guessing they’ll give public explainations before the day is over. These shouldn’t be too hard to find, although you may have to go to state and local media for them. The Reps. social media accounts might give them also.
Scout211
@Percysowner: Thank you for posting that. I have been waiting for the judge’s ruling. On to the state’s response, I guess.
cain
@Percysowner: Surprised the attorney general didn’t ask the judge to recuse herself because she is a woman.
Chetan Murthy
@scav: I gotta wonder: how many committed hetero people would even be willing to engage in a three-way ? I mean ….. I mean ….. I know that the percentage of bisexual people in the population is far greater than we thought (as recent surveys have shown), so even if there are a decent number of people who would engage in three-ways, that doesn’t really address my question (they could all be bisexual, if only latently). I wonder if anybody has done research on this subject.
cain
@Chetan Murthy: from all the stories I’ve heard about college back in the 90s, a lot of experimentation have been going on.
Miss Bianca
@Geminid: As long as a Dem wins that seat, not living in the district myself, I don’t really care who wins, do U? :)
Miss Bianca
@scav: “fluffing the pillows of lechery” is a wonderful phrase, thank you for that!
Chetan Murthy
@cain: I dunno: the recent surveys of Gen Z folks show massively more people who are bisexual, than in previous generations. So what we thought of as “experimentation”, could very well have been people just not being to be open about their actual desires, but …. using “experimentation” as a cover.
Or as I once read, lots of bisexual women end up getting married to men, b/c it’s just simpler, life-plan-wise. And the same with bisexual men. This being different from being “in the closet” or “living a lie” b/c if you plan to be monogamous anyway, you have to pick a gender for your mate and stick with it.
cain
@Miss Bianca: I see what you did there. :-)
Jackie
@Baud: Perez is in a WA district (my state, but not my district) that traditionally has been red, but I still don’t understand why she voted to censor.
scav
@Chetan Murthy: And then there’s the issue that not all bisexuals are into multiple simultaneous partners. It’s like being open to both ice cream and smoked bacon. Doesn’t mean smoked bacon ice cream is your only dessert option. And the fact that one can perform the mechanics of sex without really desiring or enjoying it. Nicely complerlicated.
Geminid
@Jackie: Gluesenkamp Perez is pretty talkative so she’ll probably give a public explaination. She probably won’t mention one likely reason: she didn’t want a no vote used against her in her reelection campaign next year.
cain
@Chetan Murthy: Yeah, and I support being 100% your authentic self. The problem at least from what I understand within the LBGTQ+ community is that Bi-Sexuals are not readily accepted since they aren’t committed to one or the other.
I think continuing to develop polyamorous relationships might be fine as long as it is equitable and that there is no harm. It’s a tricky thing though and vastly more complex than a 1:1 relationship.
Sister Golden Bear
@cain: One of my favorite Medieval historians, Dr. Eleanor Janega, has both a podcast and videos on YouTube that talk about sex during that period tl;dr People in the Middle Ages were having sex in all sorts of ways, including, yes, three-ways.
Also too, they seemingly were also more relaxed about trans people than today. She cites a London court case involving a prostitute. Nobody really cared that the prostitute was bigender and bisexual (with both male and female clients, including a number clergymen), rather they were hauled into court because they were caught working outside the designated red light zone.
CaseyL
@Chetan Murthy:
Back in the late 1970s, I remember quite a few men coming out as bi – and, in retrospect, they were most likely gay. Being bi was more accepted than being gay.
ETA: I often wish we could see sexuality the way non-human primates (and many other species) do. There’s reproductive mating which has to be heterosexual, for obvious reasons; and then there’s everything else: grooming, stress defusing and conflict avoidance, social cohesion, plain old affection, and pecking order stuff. All of which involves individuals canoodling with one another to varying degrees, with little to no regard for who-is-which-gender.
Ruviana
@Miss Bianca: I think it should be nominated for rotating-tag-hood.
dnfree
I like the description “second adult blonde from the right”. Neither of them appears to be an actual blonde.
Sister Golden Bear
@Chetan Murthy:
A bigger factor is that there are 10x as many men as potential partners. The dating/hook-up pool of other women is all too small. Ask me how I know.
Life-plan aspects are a far bigger influence for bisexual men, who get shit on by both the straight and gay male communities.
Sister Golden Bear
@scav:
The pernicious myth of “greedy bisexuals” really causes problems for bi people. Some of the biphobia in the lesbian communities is the presumption that bi women will cheat/leave for the first man who comes along. On the other side, “unicorn hunter”
couplesmen in couples are all too prevalent in online dating, because they assume of course bi/lesbian women would love to have a three-way with anyone who asks.Chief Oshkosh
@Geminid: I suspect that anyone who would hold a “no” vote against her was never going to vote for her anyway. So, low probability that anyone will remember or care, but high probability that she has pissed off at least one colleague, and probably more.
Maybe she (and the other two) should find another line of work.
Gretchen
@Sister Golden Bear: what’s the name of the podcast?
WaterGirl
@Percysowner: I wonder if she can get the abortion right away before anyone can appeal?
WaterGirl
@Chat Noir: New rotating tag!
Sister Golden Bear
@cain: @CaseyL:
Yeah, biphobia and bi-erasure are sadly A Thing in the LGBTQ+ communities, with too much border policing — at least those of us who are older.
Part of it, is that older lesbians/gays often had to fight hard to establish their public identities, and get really defensive about anyone they perceive as “muddying the waters.”
Another factor is that there were/are a number of gays/lesbians who initially publicly identified as bisexual, since that was perceived as being a safer way to test the waters without fully coming out. Hence the “bisexual are cowards” slur by lesbians and gays who can’t wrap their heads around the idea that their experience isn’t everyone else’s experience.
A third factor is the mistaken belief that bisexuals can have straight privilege whenever they want — similar to the bias against femme lesbians. Yes, bisexuals in an opposite-sex relationship aren’t necessarily subject to the sorts of discrimination that “visibly queer” lesbians and gay men are, but bi-invisibility and being subject to bi-dismissal (oh honey, when you are really going to come out…) sucks in its own ways. And bisexual folks also face the same sort of discrimination and gays and lesbians if they do public talk about their same-sex desires.
David Fud
She has had a direct effect on the headline-making Cobb county, Georgia Board of Education, which has followed her path of culture war to the detriment of our children. The Cobb BoE Rs are desperate to keep it majority R (currently 4-3), and are thus gerrymandering, screaming about teh gay, and banning books to protect their ongoing skim off of the $1B+ county education budget, which is the majority of county funds. Being hoisted on her own petard is simply too good for her given the widespread misery and angst she has caused here.
Sister Golden Bear
@Gretchen: Her podcast is “Gone Medieval.”
She also blogs, written a couple books, and appears in a series called “Going Medieval” on the History Hit channel, some of which are also available on YouTube.
Geminid
@Chief Oshkosh: Reps. Pappas, Hayes and Gluesenkamp Perez know as much about voter behavior as you or I do, maybe even more.
Baud
geg6
@Old School:
Hideous. No thanks, Pantone.
brendancalling
@Chetan Murthy: “Committed het” here. Not to get into TMI, but a woman I was on-and-off with for a long time called me a week before I moved to Nashville to cancel a date we had lined up, because another of her fellas was in town and she’d double-booked. I said sure, no problem, we can reschedule. Five minutes later I got a text from asking if I’d be into a threesome with her and the other guy, and of course I said yes. Guy and I didn’t have any sexytimes with each other, but my (our?) ladyfriend sure got a lot of attention. 10/10, would definitely do again.
Gretchen
@Sister Golden Bear: sounds interesting. I’ll check it out. Thanks!
Anonymous at Work
The overreach will be rejecting the Citizen Petitions for a prochoice Amendment. Least problematic since they’ll prevent it from being on ballot far enough out to avoid ugliness close to election.
RaflW
@Chetan Murthy: Psychology Today said in 2019: “Guess how many North American couples grant each other permission to:
– Occasionally step out and play sexually with others (hall passes, sex clubs).
– Engage in partner swapping (threesomes, swinging, group sex).
– Enter into emotional commitments with more than one partner (polyamory).
The best evidence suggests around 4 percent of adults. That may not sound like many, but it means one couple in 25. If you know two dozen couples, chances are one participates in consensual non-monogamy, also known as “open” relationships. Put another way, 4 percent means some 2.8 million U.S. couples.”
I suspect an undercount, since there are surely people who wouldn’t trust survey methods and answer honestly. Also, the article goes on:
The most recent study, an online survey of a representative sample of 2,003 Canadians, found 4 percent participation in CNM. Other studies agree—or come up with higher estimates~
– Temple University researchers surveyed 2,270 U.S. adults and found that 4 percent reported CNM.
– An Indiana University study of 2,021 U.S. adults showed that 10 percent of the women and 18 percent of the men reported having at least one threesome.
– And based on Census samples of 8,718 single American adults, another group of Indiana researchers found that 21 percent—one in five—reported at least one experience of CNM.
trollhattan
Moms for Liberty, YOLO edition, has thoughts.
Unleash a million Schlaflys.
NotMax
@Old School
Back in my day we called that color salmon.
@geg6
Calls to mind a memorable hideous dress seen in a thrift shop. Ostensibly a mid-thigh length prom dress* made to fit a girl of, shall we say, ample girth. Three-inch horizontal stripes from shoulder to hem alternating in that color and battleship gray.
*although may have been for a bridesmaid at a particularly peculiar wedding.
evodevo
@Chetan Murthy:
Yeah…and I always want to reply “Who says?” Any evangelical who says that is engaging in wishful thinking…”He told me!”! Well, how do you know it was Jeezus and not the Devil? LOL they have no proof, and if you search the scriptures hard enough, it will tell you that you have no idea…it’s unknown till after you die…
mrmoshpotato
@Chief Oshkosh:
LOL! Hilarious in its absurdity.
I hope the local press is asking that.
Anonymous at Work
@mrmoshpotato: The question to start with is: Bisexual grooming children to be bisexual OR closeted lesbian grooming children to be lesbian.
...now I try to be amused
Often I have to remind myself that few people are hypocrites in their own eyes, so I can ask the right questions about them. Why does a practicing bisexual like BZ dump on LGBTQ? I suspect it’s not bisexuality per se she objects to, it’s openly being bisexual. In right-wing society all that stuff belongs in the closet. If people are unhappy with that (some to the point of suicide) then too bad. Apparently society would collapse without the closet, in their view.
JaySinWA
@Geminid: This may not be so much about pandering to voters but rather a real belief that pulling that alarm was stupid (it was) and while the Representative has faced up to the legal consequences, a reprimand was in order.
The call to expel him over this was over reaching and based on a stupid claim that he was trying to halt the vote, but censure is not really out of line for this IMHO. It should help defuse the political issue.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan:
Only if it’s beer from Saint Louis.
mrmoshpotato
@Anonymous at Work: Agreed.
Sid_Viscous
@Baud: “Well, it’s not called the ‘Don’t Say Bi’ bill—so all of you hateful socialist degenerates owe me an apology. Immediately.”
Jim Appleton
@Sister Golden Bear: That is a window into something I never knew and don’t miss.
Geminid
@JaySinWA: I think this was both: a real belief that pulling that alarm was worthy of a reprimand, and avoiding a potential electoral stumbling block.
There are other Democrats in tough districts who voted against the motion, but I doubt if they or many of their colleagues in safer districts will hold this vote against the three.
Outsiders including some liberal Democrats and sites like Slate Magazine will; Slate runs an anti-Gluesenkamp Perez article every few months now and they will add this to the list of her transgressions. But I’m not sure if anyone takes that rag seriously besides the journalists at The Nation, the New Republic and of course Jerkobin Magazine.
Geminid
@Baud: I’m glad Brazil is stepping into this dispute. It beats the US having to.
Tony G
Forgetting, for the moment, the bisexual three-way lady … that photograph of DeSantis with those little kids with their little uniforms is one of the creepiest things ever.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@mrmoshpotato:
Agreed.
brantl
@coin operated:
@Chat Noir: Me, too.
Sister Golden Bear
@…now I try to be amused:
Among other reasons, it can’t be so deliciously dirty if you’re doing it openly.
matt
Seems like Moms for Liberty needs a new name, like maybe Kinky Freak Ass Republicans for Liberty
...now I try to be amused
@matt:
Moms for Libertines
rikyrah
@Chetan Murthy:
Gen X here
I have met some bisexual women.
But, every bisexual man I’ve known..come back 5 years later, and they are gay.
Mike in Pasadena
Well done, McDonald. More shaming and mockery for these christianists who want to police the morals of others. Shame and mockery has been earned by these hypocrits.
Dan B
@Baud: Gluesencamp Perez’s district is Vancouver USA and Alabama PNW. It’s very (White) Christian Nationalist. She is representing them in congress. I’m all for having her reelected even though I despise the racism and “Christian” fascism of her district.
Dan B
@Mike in Pasadena: A woman in Pennsylvania was sworn in to her school board on a stack of banned books. Someone pointed out that these books were much more chaste than the incest and emissions of massive genitals Bible.
Dan B
@rikyrah: For many men coming out as gay represents a step down in stature. It’s grounded in misogyny. Submitting to a man is supposed to be the territory of women. I much prefer it to be defined as stepping up to being an equal loving partner. The concept of equal partnership is anathema to conservatives, especially fascists.
Geminid
@Dan B: It took me some time to discover that about 2/3s of Rep. Gluesenkamp’s constituents live in Clark County, right across the river from Portland. So her win fits into the pattern of Democrats flipping suburban-based districts that came with a whoosh in 2018 and has continued more slowly since then.
Of course Clark is a big county and must have some rural-exurban communities, and the counties surrounding it are rural where they’re not National Forest. And Gluesenkamp herself projects a working-class image: a Reed-educated roughneck who lives in the woods and commutes to the city.
The former Representative, Jaime Herrera Butler, would probably still hold that seat except she was one of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, and one of the four who then lost their primary (four others retired,l.
Joe Kent, the Republican Gluesenkamp Perez faced in November, was a radical and that benefitted her. He’ll likely advance from the primary next year and it will be an interesting rematch.
Aj
@Percysowner: if you are 9 to 50 and female you had better have a lawyer not a doctor..
Texas will probably outlaw genetic testing and Dr speech will be prohibited. If women don’t have agency there is no reason for any Dr to tell them anything…
Sorry I am being pessimistic.