Anderson Cooper Forces Republican to Confront Systemic Homophobia

[Content Note: Pulse shooting; homophobia.]

Anderson Cooper interviewed Republican Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, and pressed her to justify her, and her party's, systemic and legislative homophobia, while then offering thoughts and prayers and other platitudes to the LGBTx community following the Pulse Nightclub shooting. It went exactly as well (for her) as you'd imagine.


[Media Matters has the transcript.]
Bondi's constant refrain of "human beings" reminds me of this tweet I saw this morning:

Credit to Steve King who said on CNN the gays killed in Orlando have equal standing with God as Christians killed in Charleston.

— Justin Miller (@justinjm1) June 15, 2016

I don't know Justin Miller, but I suspect he may have been being facetious. In any case, it's clear Rep. King himself believes he deserves credit for what he thinks is great magnanimity.

I am, as you know, disinclined to give cookies credit to anyone for basic decency. I also don't think it's relevant, especially not in a culture in which not everyone is a god-believer, whether some homophobic legislator (who, by the way, previously said he doesn't expect to meet any LGBTx people "in heaven") imagines that gay people and Christians (not mutually exclusive groups, Rep. King!) have "equal standing with god."

What's rather more important in the here and now is whether they have equal standing with human beings.

Rep. King and Atty. Gen. Bondi and the vast majority of their party have made it abundantly clear that not every person has equal standing with them.

And that is the problem.