Greg Kelly, an anchor on the right-wing Newsmax media outlet, said he will not watch the NFL Super Bowl game this Sunday, and that the game’s logo looks “a little bit LGBT queer-ish” to him.
“The colors, a little bit. I’m sorry. I think it is,” Kelly said in a Thursday broadcast, according to Media Matters. “And that’s whatever. I think it has nothing to do with football. Straight, gay, whatever. Why is that, kind of, in big ways, explicit ways and subliminal ways, it always seems to be a thing?”
Right-wingers have long claimed that the Super Bowl, its halftime show, and TV ads indoctrinate viewers with subliminal “satanic” and LGBTQ+ content. Our sibling site, Outsports, noted that Super Bowl LX will feature several different LGBTQ-friendly players and coaches from the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots.
Out San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones took a stand on Thursday evening in defense of the LGBTQ+ community, shutting down a homophobic gadfly who disparaged her recent appointment of a gay man to the city’s Ethics Review Board.
“We’re not going to tolerate hate speech here,” she told the religious conservative. “Your time is up. Thank you.”
Jones was elected as the Texas city’s first out gay mayor last June.
She was reacting to a minutes-long screed from the 73-year-old retiree, Jack M. Finger, who used his public comment time at a City Council meeting to smear Eric Alva, a gay Marine veteran of the Iraq War who was the first seriously injured U.S. combatant in the conflict. He lost a leg after stepping on a land mine.
Alva was among the veterans and lawmakers who stood by President Barack Obama as he signed the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 2011, and was active in the campaign to end the anti-LGBTQ+ military policy.
“Unfortunately, Mr. Alva has been an advocate for the homosexual agenda,” Finger told the chamber. “He’s a member of the homosexual community. And by definition, that means you engage in homosexual acts. We have real problems with a person who engages in homosexual acts being part of an ethics committee.”
“Madam mayor, we still don’t want it,” Finger replied to Jones.
“Thank you,” Jones repeated, before looking toward a guard in chambers.
“Security.”
“Thank you,” Finger snapped. He returned to his seat.
It wasn’t the first time Alva has been disparaged at a council meeting.
In 2013, he spoke about an LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination measure under consideration. He was roundly booed by an overflow crowd of religious conservatives.
“Well, I just left city council chambers and I feel like crying,” Alva posted to Facebook in the aftermath. “Such disrespect as they preach the word of God.”
After Finger took his seat, councilmember Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, the first out gay man elected to the council, echoed — and amplified — Jones’ sentiments.
“You come up here several times a month,” McKee-Rodriguez said to Finger. “We laugh and we giggle about some of the things that you say that are really hateful in nature. I want you to know that sometimes when people become figures that are routine at City Council, that the day that they pass we remember them and we think about all the great times we had up here.”
“When you pass, I don’t think that will be happening,” he said. “I think we will remember every single hateful thing that you said, every person that you hurt, and that will be your legacy.”
Jones’ stand in defense of Alva and the LGBTQ+ community follows criticism in November of how she handled orders from the Texas Department of Transportation to dismantle a rainbow crosswalk in the city.
While community activists were primed for a fight over the Pride intersection, Jones seemed to have moved on.
“There’s a number of ways we can show our pride, make sure our community feels seen and heard, and we are not inviting unneeded retribution against the most vulnerable in our community,” Jones told an underwhelmed crowd at a celebration designating San Antonio’s gayborhood as a cultural district.
“My pride is not tied to this paint,” she said. “You know why? Because it’s in my heart and in my head. No one is going to take away who we are, what we have contributed to this city, to this state, and to this country. It doesn’t matter what they say. We will move forward. We know our worth. We’ll just figure out a different way.”
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