Budapest Pride was banned and 180,000 came

The June 3 episode of Gaslit Nation hosted by Andrea Chalupa is titled Putin is Dead Man Walking and came shortly after Ukraine pulled off that amazing drone attack that damaged key airplanes in Russia’s fleet and did it in bases far from Ukraine. The guest in this episode is Lionel De Lange of South Africa. He is a conservationist, saving animals from neglect from private zoos. He believes nature is a healing force in the world. He now visits the front lines of Russia’s position in Ukraine to save humans. They discuss the claim of white genocide in South Africa, something the nasty guy made a big deal when the South African president visited the White House. Yeah, white people have been murdered, but far more black people have been murdered. Also, there are about 60 million people in South Africa and 1.5 of them are white. If the blacks wanted to wipe out the whites that would have been done already and done very quickly. That drone attack in Russia happened in part because Ukraine is afraid of falling support from the US and the West. Yes, the planning of the attack happened while Biden was still in office, but even he wasn’t giving Ukraine all the help they wanted, as generous as he was. So Ukraine said we’ll do it ourselves. Ukraine paid for the successful attack through ongoing nights of Russian missiles firing on Ukraine cities. In the 11 years that De Lange has been in Ukraine he has noticed a lot of difference. The people now respect each other, no longer shoving each other in supermarkets. Now they’re more polite, greeting others on the street and ready to help when needed. But one must still be careful of propaganda. In addition to rescuing animals, and he has stories about that, De Lange also rescued humans. That meant he was exposed to Russian drone attacks. After accident at Chernobyl the humans evacuated. The animals and plants thrived, not affected (perhaps made stronger) by the radiation. De Lange wanted to turn the region into a nature park. Alas, with the war it didn’t happen. When Russia invaded many of its soldiers dug trenches in the Chernobyl region. Most of them have now been hospitalized and a few died of radiation poisoning. Russia attempted to cause an explosion at the Chernobyl plant in hopes of breaching the radioactive container. They wanted to send the radiation across Ukraine and Europe (and some across Russia too). They did not succeed. And Ukrainians were quick to repair the damage. Ukraine is protecting us as well as themselves. They’re holding back Russia that would invade Europe after it took Ukraine. We need to pay closer attention and provide more help to Ukraine. Poland narrowly elected a deeply corrupt figure similar to the nasty guy, one who is staunchly against LGBTQ rights. He capitalized on all the Ukrainian refugees in Poland. Other minorities, including Jews, feel they have a target on their heads. This will not be helpful to Ukraine. De Lange said Putin has been meddling around the world. He’ll soon try to meddle in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Putin’s downfall will be like Hitler’s, fighting on too many fronts. That will be the only way he gets wiped out. Alas, millions of people will die before he is stopped. De Lange said Putin can’t walk away even if everyone promised there would be no charges against him. Between the Ukraine war (and that successful attack by Ukraine), his international meddling, and the horrible Russian economy Putin is dead man walking. In Russia changing the guy at the top is frequently violent. I don’t know how accurate De Lange is in his predictions. Two week’s later the June 17 episode was titled Putin’s Sledgehammer. That’s part of the title of a book by Candace Rondeaux. She’s a reporter and an expert on global security and the future of warfare. The full title of the book is Putin’s Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse into Mercenary Chaos. June 23, a couple days after this episode was posted, marked the two year anniversary of Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner group getting within 125 miles (200 km) of Moscow. The book is about Wagner and that crack in Putin’s power. Exactly two months later Prigozhin’s plane exploded. The Wagner group was created because Russia’s conventional warfare capacity has always been challenging. The Wagner group could be more agile in situations like Syria while giving the Russian state plausible deniability. The Wagner group had a brand identity of violence and aggression. The Wagner group, and other groups dealing in mayhem, would record their excessive violence and post it on social media. In a sense it was displaying their trophies. These groups got such a reputation of terror that their targets would empty out to avoid the violence and sadism. The title of the book comes from the group beating a guy with a sledgehammer while others filmed it. Guys beating the devil with a sledgehammer became the group’s logo. I’m so not interested in the brutal details of the Wagner group that I stopped reading less than halfway through. My Sunday movie was the documentary Casting By. I watched it through Kanopy. It is about the role of the casting director in making movies. More accurately, most of the film is about the first great casting director Marion Dougherty. In the Hollywood Studio system the person in charge of casting essentially looked over the list of contract actors and assign them to parts based mostly on looks and assumed character type. When TV came along the early directors were more interested in acting ability and personality than looks. Dougherty got a casting job because a friend invited her to be the assistant. Soon she was the person in charge. She would attend New York theater productions, Broadway and not, looking for great actors. She had quite an eye for talent. Her earliest big successes were Naked City and Route 66 that needed new actors for every episode. Some of the talent she discovered and promoted were James Dean, Gene Hackman, Glenn Close, Al Pacino, Diane Lane, Dustin Hoffman, Bette Midler, and Robert Redford. Many of those actors and their directors are in this documentary to describe what their relationship with Daugherty did for their careers. There were times when Dougherty had a particular actor in mind for a particular role and she did a lot of convincing to win over the director. Some of her wins are now iconic performances rewarded with Oscar nominations and wins. Daugherty’s roster of known talent was so vast that when she was asked to cast The Sting, which came out in 1973, she went down the list of characters and assigned the actors. She actually auditioned for only one character. The movie spends some time with the casting of Lethal Weapon, released in 1987. In one of the two major roles Daugherty recommended Danny Glover. The director said, hold on, he’s black. Her response was, so? The director later admitted she had opened his eyes to his internal racism. There were some regrets in her long career. In the 1990s many studios were bought by conglomerates, some of them foreign. Again, casting decisions were made according to the actor’s looks and whether the studio wanted to promote an actor from this TV series for that movie. That pretty much ended Daugherty’s career, though several of her protégés are still going strong. Another regret was while Oscars are given out for scenery, costumes, and editing, there isn’t one for casting. And casting can make a big difference in how a movie comes out. The Oscar snub is more annoying because there is an Emmy for casting. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos wrote a good summary of all five cases for which the Supreme Court issued decisions last Friday, the last day of their term. Only one of the five is good for democracy. I’m glad Needham wrote the summary because most other news outlets reported on only one or two. The nasty guy’s executive order banning birthright citizenship went before the Court, but not to get a decision on that question. The case, Trump v. CASA asked the Court to rule instead on whether lower courts can issue injunctions against the government that apply nationwide. The Court ruled they can’t. That means when a person, group, or state wins a case in a federal court the ruling affects only the people who brought the suit. This means overturning an executive order that contradicts the Constitution is much harder. Every state has to pursue a case (and some stated won’t) or an organization has to go through the extra effort to certify they represent a class of affected people. That could mean until the Supremes rule on birthright citizenship some states will follow it and some won’t. And that raises a big legal mess, such as whether a baby born in Minnesota is a citizen if the family moves to Texas. This means the nasty guy can issue an executive order undoing part of the Constitution and the legal system has a much harder time stopping him. In the meantime he gets to continue doing his unconstitutional thing until the case gets to the Supremes and they get around to acting on it. I heard today that the ACLU is assembling a class action suit over the birthright citizenship issue. In Mahmoud v. Taylor the Court decided schools need to allow students to opt out of a classroom lesson if their parents object. The case went all the way to the Supremes because a school district tried it and found it unworkable. The particular case involved books with LGBTQ content, but could be expanded to cover evolution or science in general. Justice Sotomayor wrote in her dissent that the decision “threatens the very essence of public education.” The conservative justices probably think that’s a good thing. The case Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton is a case brought against the Attorney General of Texas. The decision means internet porn sites are required to see a government issued ID to verify the person is an adult. All this is about “sexual material harmful to minors.” Yes, the Court added an exception to the First Amendment. And conservatives could expand the definition of “harmful” to include discussions of transgender issues and many other things. The case is Kennedy v. Braidwood is nominally about conservative Christian business owners objecting to pay for health insurance that covers such preventive care things as PrEP, the medication that prevents the transmission of HIV. Behind that is an attack on the US Preventive Services Task Force, which recommends what things should be covered by insurance. The good part is the PSTF care recommendations remain. The bad part is its members were declared to not need Senate confirmation, which means Heath Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. can replace them with people who agree with his conspiracies. The last case is FCC v. Consumers’ Research. The Federal Communications Commission requires internet and phone carriers pay into a fund to subsidize access in rural and poor area. Consumers’ Research argued a technicality to say the fund is illegal. Six justices – the liberals plus Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett – kept the agency’s authority to institute the fund. Since the justices have gutted other federal agency authorities, this seems like a vulnerable win. Kos of Kos reported last Thursday evening that the Department of Justice is coming after Daily Kos. The DoJ went after ActBlue and Media Matters, so attacking Kos to silence the nasty guy’s enemies isn’t a surprise. The details of the case can’t be disclosed (yet?). Even so Kos asked readers to donate to the site’s legal defense fund. By Friday at 1:00 Kos reported readers had donated over $50,000. He is humbled by the support of the Kos community.

Because this has never just been about me. Or even Daily Kos. It’s about what we’ve built together over the past 23 years: a space to fight for democracy, for decency, for a government that serves people—not authoritarians. And just as importantly, it’s become a community—a place where people who care about those things can find each other, lift each other up, and know they’re not alone in this fight. What you gave on Thursday wasn’t just financial support—it was a reminder of how deeply connected we are. That when one of us is under threat, the rest of us show up. That we have each other’s backs. I’m getting emotional just typing that. (Who am I kidding? I’ve been an emotional wreck writing this entire piece.) [Deep breaths, composing myself …] It’s proof that this community is strong. That it’s kind. And that it’s ready to stand together, no matter what.

Now for some beautiful stories. TheCriticalMind of the Kos community reported that in April Hungarian dictator Victor Orban’s Fidesz party passed an amendment to the Constitution requiring recognition of only two genders and restricting LGBTQ events, citing “child protection.” Yeah, we know that’s a fake reason. However, it means Pride parades are banned in Hungary. And the one in Budapest was one of the best. Pride organizers in Budapest renamed it “Budapest Pride Freedom” in honor of Hungary’s return to freedom when Soviet troops left in June 1991. Not that anyone was fooled. Organizers anticipated 35,000 to 40,000. TheCriticalMind quoted a report from The Guardian:

Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets of Budapest in defiance of the Hungarian government's ban on Pride, heeding a call by the city's mayor to "come calmly and boldly to stand together for freedom, dignity and equal rights", writes Lili Rutai in Budapest and Ashifa Kassam. Jubilant crowds packed into the city's streets on Saturday, waving Pride flags and signs that mocked the country's prime minister, Viktor Orbán, as their peaceful procession inched forward at a snail's pace. Organisers estimated that a record number of people turned up, far outstripping the expected turnout of 35,000-40,000 people. "We believe there are 180,000 to 200,000 people attending," the president of Pride, Viktória Radványi told AFP. "It is hard to estimate because there have never been so many people at Budapest Pride."

See the photo at the top of the post. Also see the photos in a Bluesky tweet by valentine. He says the attendance topped a half million. From the photos I believe a half million is possible (not that I know what a half million people looks like). Budapest Pride is still one of the best. I scrolled down the replies to that tweet and saw an image of the Sydney Opera House lit up in Pride colors. Bridgette Redman for Between the Lines reported the Presbyterian Church of Okemos, Michigan held a baptism rededication service for 16-year old Zach Nawyn-Hellinga, transgender, so that he would be baptized with his new name, leaving his deadname behind. Before the service there were discussions with Rebecca Mattern, who led youth ministry, pastor Rev. Lisa Schrott, and the church’s governing body. “Everyone expressed enthusiasm.”

On Jan. 12, Nawyn-Hellinga was joined by his family at the front of the congregation where Mattern, Schrott and the Clerk of Session asked him the questions of his reaffirmation and led the congregation in a responsive liturgy. “The congregation just resoundingly said, ‘We see you,’” Mattern noted. “They said it loud and with confidence, and several of the members of the congregation had tears in their eyes. If I hadn’t processed it and cried before I got there, I would have been crying, because we are in a time where there is a concerted effort to erase trans people. They’re being told that they don’t exist, that they’re predators. Their parents are being told they’re grooming. It is the job of the church, and the calling of the church, to say to those who are in the margins, 'We see you and we love you.' No matter what the world says, you are a beloved child of God.” Schrott said they added their Clerk of Session because they wanted it to be clear that it was an action of the church, not a rogue pastoral choice.

And one just for fun. Sarah Bricker Hunt of Between the Lines reported the Motor City Bears did their 17th annual car wash. They raised almost $1,700 for Affirmations and Ruth Ellis Center. In gay jargon a “bear” is a large hairy gay man. And many do the car wash wearing only a speedo (and I hope a great deal of sunscreen). They liked to joke, “your car is so dirty, so dirty.”