Right Wing Media Still Spewing Hate – ‘Watch Out, The Lesbos Are Coming!’

The right-wing media clutched their pearls in a panic this weekend as the Iowa LGBT Rural Summit was held at Drake University. The summit was the fifteenth in a series hailed as a way to address the unique issues faced by LGBT individuals who choose to live, work, and raise families in rural areas.

Right-Wing Responds With Typical Homophobia

I can’t tell you why the right-wing decided to latch on to this particular summit, given that 14 of them have already occurred across the country since 2014. Perhaps it’s because it took place in the politically important state of Iowa. Whatever the reason, their response was enough to make any sane-minded person’s head spin.

The conservative rag known as the Washington Free Beacon wrote:

“The all-day summit will teach lesbian and transgender hillbillies how to get subsidies from the government like rural housing loans and ‘community facility grants.’ Bullying will also be discussed.”

Wow. “Lesbian and transgender hillbillies,” eh?

Rush Limbaugh found the Beacon’s  article and couldn’t help himself from commenting, of course:

“Have you heard the latest Democrat scam? Have you heard about the Agriculture Department’s financial grants to lesbian farmers? … You sit in there and laugh. OK, go ahead and laugh at it, but I’m telling you what they’re doing. They are trying to bust up one of the last geographic conservative regions in the country, and that’s rural America.

Rural America happens to be largely conservative. Rural America is made up of self-reliant, rugged individual types. They happen to be big believers in the Second Amendment. So here comes the Obama regime with a bunch of federal money and they’re waving it around, and all you gotta do to get it is be a lesbian and want to be a farmer and they’ll set you up.”

World Net Daily latched on to Limbaugh’s rant, claiming:

“A new federal plan encouraging lesbians to become farmers has a hidden, strategic purpose, according to radio host Rush Limbaugh, who is blasting it as ‘the latest Democrat scam.’”

So, the right-wing seems to believe that the government wants lesbians to become farmers so they can infiltrate all those red states. Yep.

LGBT Individuals Actually DO Face Unique Problems In Rural Communities

And why is that? Largely because of the discrimination they face from the right-wing assholes living among them, of course.

The summits use the hashtag #RuralPride, which the task force describes as:

“an effort to elevate the voices of the LGBT community living in rural America.”

The campaign states:

“Contrary to widely held myths that the LGBT community is largely living in affluent metropolitan areas, studies show a very different and more realistic picture of the LGBT community. For a number of reasons, many people in the LGBT community choose to live, work, and raise their families in the rural communities that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is proud to serve.

In fact, according to the Williams Institute, ‘almost 10% of all same-sex couples in the country live in rural America’ and these couples are actually more likely to be families of color and raising children. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force also issued a report finding that these couples are more likely to be low-income and are almost twice as likely to receive public assistance. The transgender community is particularly vulnerable.

Transgender people, especially transgender people of color, experience disturbingly high rates of poverty across the country. Additional research conducted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and National Center for Transgender Equality shows that they are four times as likely to have a household income under $10,000 and twice as likely to be unemployed as non-transgender people. The LGBT community in rural America has a number of particular needs and vulnerabilities that USDA is excited to target and address.”

The right-wing needs to wake up and realize that these problems exist mainly because of them. They are the ones who heap the most discrimination and abuse on the LGBTQ community.

Full transcript of Limbaugh show available here.

Featured Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr under a CC by 2.0 license

Carrie is a progressive mom and wife living in the upper Midwest.