Elder Trans Wizard 🧙‍♂️ 🏳️‍⚧️ 🪐 🏳️‍🌈 🎵

Rocket Scientist, Tech Geek, Photographer, Scout, Reader, Writer, Mentor, Musician, owned by cats, Elder Trans Wizard, Trekkie, Renaissance man, he/him/er/el

[Daniel Lismore @daniellismore]

You can hand a TERF a peer reviewed study published in Nature. You can give them the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. You can show them forty years of neuroscience, genetics, embryology and endocrinology published by researchers at the world’s leading institutions. You can explain that the WHO, the American Medical Association and the Royal College of Psychiatrists all agree.
They will still think their nazi invented opinion is superior to the evidence.
That is not a position that came from reading the science and disagreeing with it. That is a position that came from somewhere else entirely and is now using the language of science as a costume.
The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin held decades of peer reviewed research on transgender people, gay people and sexual diversity. In 1933 it was one of the first things burned.
Not because the research was wrong.
Because the ideology had already decided on the conclusion and the research contradicted it.
You cannot reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into.
But you can make sure everyone watching knows the difference between an opinion and a fact.
The facts are not on their side.
Terfs are no better than the Nazi who attacked trans people before they did.

[Lakota Man @LakotaMan1]

So, people have been asking me my thoughts vis-a-vis Dr. Fauci.

My response?

When is Trump going to be arrested and imprisoned for sexually abusing children on Jeffrey Epstein’s sadistic little island?

[Protect Kamala Harris ✊ @DisavowTrump20]

RETWEET if you stand with Dr. Fauci!

[Sandi Bachom 📹 @sandibachom]

Empathy

[jm @jeaneri]

just a reminder ladies and gentlemen

[Snowden Bishop🌻💚🤍❤️✌️🇺🇦🆘🔄🌍 @SnowdenBishop]

Walter Cronkite: After liberating execution camps… Germans (who cried) they didn’t know…were as as guilty as Nazis…because they applauded when Hitler shut down (media) and said, ‘We don’t need to know. We trust our government...’

It’s our duty to know.

[Daniel Lismore @daniellismore]

We Told You J.K. Rowling Would Come for the Gay Rights Movement Next. Now She Has.

J.K. Rowling is now attacking the gay rights movement, and gay men and lesbians need to understand exactly what that means. Transgender people, gay people and lesbians have warned for years that this campaign would not stop with transgender rights. We were mocked, shouted down and accused of hysteria. We were told that it was only about language, only about sport, only about prisons, only about toilets and only about “protecting women.” We said that once the removal of one minority’s rights became publicly acceptable, the campaign would widen. We were right.

Rowling has now written that the gay rights movement is “host to a cannibalising ideology.” Those are her words, not an interpretation invented by transgender activists. She is no longer merely commenting on one transgender policy or one court case. She is publicly portraying the gay rights movement as corrupted and destructive because so many gay men and lesbians continue to stand beside transgender people.

As a gay man, I regard that as homophobic. She is attacking my movement, my history, my family and the community that fought for people like me to live openly. She does not get to stand outside our community and decide which members belong within it. She does not get to tell gay men and lesbians that our solidarity with transgender people has contaminated our own liberation movement.

We told you this would happen.

This progression did not appear overnight. It began with what was presented as an accidental social-media interaction—a “slip of the finger.” People were told not to overreact. Rowling then insisted that she respected transgender people and did not wish them harm. But the occasional post became a sustained political campaign. Her enormous platform helped move hostility towards transgender people from the margins into Britain’s newspapers, political parties, courts and public institutions.

She did not do this alone, and saying so would let too many institutions escape responsibility. Governments, judges, regulators, newspapers, broadcasters, campaign organisations and political parties all made decisions of their own. But Rowling was not a powerless observer. She amplified campaigners to millions of followers and financially supported the For Women Scotland litigation that featured in the process leading to the Supreme Court’s restrictive interpretation of “sex” under the Equality Act.

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention explicitly referred to Rowling’s financial support for that litigation in its June 2025 Red Flag Alert concerning anti-transgender and anti-intersex developments in Britain. It warned about identity erasure, segregation and the removal of protections. That alert is the Institute’s human-rights assessment, not a judicial determination that genocide has legally occurred. It is nevertheless an exceptionally serious warning from an organisation established to identify dangerous patterns before they escalate further.

Amnesty International UK has also investigated the growth and influence of the organised gender-critical movement. Its May 2026 report, Like a Snowball, describes a movement that has gained substantial influence over British politics and media and places anti-trans campaigning within a wider anti-rights environment. Amnesty does not treat this as a neutral academic disagreement in which both sides are merely debating definitions. It examines how a minority’s protections, dignity and participation in public life have been systematically challenged.

[🌷🦋 Love Music 🎶 & Dance 💃🏻🕺🏻 @Tiana_Celine_23]

Rita Moreno performing "Fever" on the Muppet Show with Animal on drums which originally aired almost 50 years ago in the UK on September 12, 1976 and in New York on September 20, 1976 which earned her a Primetime Emmy Award.

[Elder Trans Wizard 🧙‍♂️ 🏳️‍⚧️ 🪐 🏳️‍🌈 🎵 @jspignate]

🤣🤣🤣

[Christopher Webb @cwebbonline]

I wasn’t ready for this. ☠️ 😭

Low T Pete will never live this down.

[The Beatles Earth @BeatlesEarth]

Happy 86th birthday, Ringo Starr! 🎂 🎊

[MP Arizona☀️🏳️‍🌈💙🌵🐕🐕‍🦺🫂💦🏜🐟🌴🎙🌎🌻♍️🌊 @AzPetrich]

Clarence Thomas argued the 14th Amendment was written narrowly for former enslaved people and doesn't apply broadly today. Using that same logic, the 2nd Amendment was written for muskets and doesn't apply to AR-15's, but somehow, he's never made that argument.

[Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 @cmclymer]

If Iran and Egypt don't want to see Pride flags at their match in Seattle, that's just too damn bad.

LGBTQ folks were intentionally erased in Qatar in 2022 due to "respect for local culture."

Seattle supports LGBTQ people. Respect the local culture.

[Hunter Biden @HunterBiden]

The Lessons I Learned from My Dad

I am not the man my father is.
I am trying. Some days closer. Some days farther.
He never sat me down and explained these lessons. He lived them. I’m still learning them.

Show up.
The kitchen table. The hospital room. The funeral. The picket line. The call from the son who won’t answer.
Show up.
Most days that’s the whole job.
My whole life I watched him do it. Not for cameras. Not for headlines. Not because there was something in it for him. He showed up because someone needed him.

I learned that grief doesn’t make you special.
My father buried a wife and daughter. He buried a son. Yet he never treated grief as a claim on other people’s sympathy. Instead, it made him notice theirs.
A mother who lost a child. A father sitting beside a hospital bed. A kid scared about what comes next. A son who lost his mother, his sister, his brother.
He always noticed.

I learned that power is not the point.
The people who chase power eventually confuse the office with themselves.
My father never did.
Whether he was a county councilman, a senator, vice president, or president, he was the same man.
The title changed.
He didn’t.

I learned that family comes first.
The train from Wilmington wasn’t symbolism.
It was every night.
He read to us. Showed up to games. Sat through hospital rooms. Waited up for children who were lost.
And when the day came that the country and the family could not both have him at full strength, he chose family. He relinquished the last chapter of how he wanted to be remembered. And he never complained about it.

Most of all, I learned that love is not soft.
Love is discipline.
Love is showing up at one in the morning when nobody is watching.
Love is answering the phone.
Love is staying.
Love is getting back up after life knocks you down and doing it all again tomorrow.
That love saved my life.
I’ve failed at many of these lessons, sometimes in very public ways.
He loved me anyway.

That’s the last lesson.
I am not trying to become my father.
I am trying to carry what he gave me.
And if I can do that, even imperfectly, that will be enough.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you.

[Paulina Guzik @Guzik_Paulina]

I just play it on repeat since yesterday:

"Hello Pope Leo XIV, I'm Renzo, I'm six years old.
I'd like to ask you a few questions."

Renzo, a little a boy from the poor neighborhood of Barcelona, stole the show yesterday at St. Augustine's parish, a place where Pope Leo admitted he "feels at home."

Renzo in the sweetest way ever asked those questions to the pope:
Do you like soccer?
When you were little, did you want to be Pope?
Why are my mom and dad worried?
Why does my dad have so many jobs?
Why do bad things happen to some people and not to others? Whose fault is it?
Why are there so many people living on the streets? Does no one see them? Does no one help them?
How can we help if the world is so big?
Does God want there to be poor and rich?
Why are there so many lonely grandparents, if they are so important?
And one last question ... Must we always forgive?

What pope Leo answered the boy was really moving.

"Regarding whether I like football, I confess that I play tennis and I enjoy it very much, but I also appreciate football; in fact, during my years as bishop in Peru, I liked to follow how some local teams were doing; and now, as Pope, I have also received football clubs and sports groups," the pope said, adding that "sport is important because it helps us grow up healthy in body and mind."

He said that as World Cup unfolds, "many will be watching the matches. Football reminds us of something we must not forget: life is not a race to show off alone, but a path we learn to travel together."

"Whoever doesn't know how to pass the ball, even if they have talent, hasn't yet understood the game. And whoever doesn't know how to live with others and for others hasn't yet understood life."

Answering whether he wanted to be Pope when he was little, the pope said: "Well, Renzo, I don't think so. I don't think I ever thought about it."

"But I can tell you something: from a young age, I felt the desire to dedicate my life to God. I didn't yet know exactly how or where the Lord would lead me. Over time, I discovered that Jesus was calling me to follow him as a priest, and that this path led through the Order of Saint Augustine."

"But this isn't just true for me," he said. "Every child is a dream of God. You are too. God desires the happiness of all and wants us, from childhood and throughout our lives, to have a heart like that of children (cf. Mt 18:3): capable of trusting, full of kindness; he wants us to be his friends and not turn away from him. Therefore, more important than asking oneself whether one will be a priest, doctor, teacher, parent, or anything else, is asking oneself whether one wants to be a friend of Jesus. Because friendship with Jesus gives us joy, sets us free, and helps us to see, step by step, the vocation and the path that God has planned for each of us."

Answering the point on injustices in the world, Pope Leo told the boy that "through the life of Jesus Christ, God shows us that, although there is suffering, he never abandons any of his children, because he has prepared for us an eternal joy where there will be no more sadness or pain. Let us have confidence, Jesus is with us, he helps us and accompanies us, and gives us strength to go through the difficult moments we may encounter in life."

Stressing that grandparents play a crucial role in families, the pope said: "Let us not allow loneliness and abandonment to become normalized in the lives of older adults. That is a very sad thing. Let's have our hearts open to all of them."

On forgiveness, he told Renzo and those gathered: "It does not mean forgetting by force, as if nothing had happened. Forgiveness means not letting hatred become the master of our hearts ... our willingness to forgive is a condition for the forgiveness we receive from God."
Video: Vatican Media

[David Hayward | Artist @nakedpastor]

Existence is resistance! Remember that your joy is a revolutionary act. Don’t let them bury you!

#Pride #Pride2026 #LoveIsLove

[Daniel Lismore @daniellismore]

Being transgender is biological. So is being intersex. So is being non-binary. Science explains all of it and has done for decades.

The brain and the genitals develop in separate windows in the womb on different hormonal timelines. When those timelines differ the result is a transgender person. This is documented embryology. It is peer reviewed. It is published in journals that have been around longer than most of the people arguing against it.

Some people are too stupid or too frightened to want to learn that. Those are two different problems with the same result.

Being transgender is more scientifically documented than any religion ever invented. More peer reviewed. More replicated. More verified across independent research teams in multiple countries over multiple decades.

You do not have to believe in transgender people the way you believe in a God.

You just have to read…

[Sesame Street @sesamestreet]

Happy #PrideMonth from Sesame Street! Join us in celebrating and uplifting the LGBTQIA+ members of our community. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

[James Martin, SJ @JamesMartinSJ]

Pope Leo XIV: "Among these ideologies, I consider particularly insidious the one that suggests that every person must earn or justify his or her own worth, to the point of attributing greater value to those who are more efficient or effective. From this perspective, persons end up being reduced to a means of achieving results, a resource to be used and exploited, and are no longer recognized as a proper end in themselves who should never be instrumentalized. The value of persons, however, does not depend on what they achieve or produce. There are rights that apply to everyone simply by virtue of being human, and no human power can legitimately deny or arbitrarily limit them." #MagnificaHumanitas

[Senator Mark Kelly @SenMarkKelly]

George Washington believed that vaccinating his troops against smallpox was the key to winning the Revolutionary War and our independence. A founding father from 250 years ago had a better understanding of science and military readiness than Pete Hegseth.

[James Martin, SJ @JamesMartinSJ]

Pope Francis died a year ago today.  I would like to share one memory, which I think reveals something of what made him such a holy man.

In May of 2024, after it was reported that Pope had made some negative remarks about gay priests and used an Italian slur (“frociaggine”) in a meeting with Italian bishops, there was a firestorm of reaction. Even I wondered: How could this be? We had had several conversations and notes back and forth about LGBTQ issues. It seemed so out of character.

A few weeks later I was scheduled to be in Rome after helping to arrange a papal audience for a group of professional comedians. The pope invited me to see him, along with two friends who served as translators. I asked a cardinal friend how I could possibly bring up something so difficult—the question of gay priests and his use of language. My friend said, “Just say, ‘Holy Father, these things have been much in the news. What thoughts do you have?’”

The very first thing Francis said, as if he had been waiting to say it, was that he knew many holy, faithful and celibate gay priests and seminarians. When I suggested that it might help to say so publicly, he said, “Oh, but I think I have. And in any event, you can say that!” I wanted to make sure I understood him, so said, “So you’re saying I can say that you know many holy, faithful and celibate gay priests and seminarians?” He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Of course. Because I do!”  My friends also told him that he shouldn’t have used that slur.  He nodded sadly, and said, “Yes, yes, you’re right.”

For the next hour or so, we discussed the word he used, before moving on to other more general topics: the U.S. church, the political scene, and so on. It was a relaxed and friendly conversation, but initially about a tough topic.

A few days later, I saw him at the comedians’ audience, when he gave a beautiful reflection on humor in the Sala Clementina. When everyone lined up to shake his hand, I lingered in the back, since I had just seen him. But then several Vatican officials said, “Father, go ahead!” 

When I reached his chair, he laughed and said, “Ah, so now you’re a famous American comedian!” I laughed and started to move away, knowing he was probably busy and tired. But he pulled me back insistently.

Then the pope said, “Thank you for our meeting the other day. It was helpful for me. I really needed to hear that.” He smiled and then gave me a thumbs up. (Amazingly, a friend sent me video of this very interchange, linked here, where you can see what’s happening.)

I thought: Who does this? Who thanks someone for a difficult meeting? Who thanks someone for being challenged? The answer: a person who is open to the Holy Spirit. A person who is not afraid to listen. A person who is truly humble. Something like that doesn’t make you a holy person or a saint on its own, but it’s an important part of holiness.  May this holy man rest in peace.