Donald Trump is a Rapist. His Followers Can Never Be Forgiven For Supporting Him.

From A Straight Ally: Why Matthew Vines' Dismissive Words About The Queer Community Matter

I am a lifelong aspiring straight LGBTQ ally. For the past few decades, I’ve worked to be a good listener, to be willing to have my blind spots revealed, to be open to changing a deeply held assumption, to be willing to reckon with my profound privilege. My journey over this time has placed me in the path of millions of beautiful human beings who’ve shaped my understanding of sexuality up close and from a distance: scholars, pastors, physicians, activists, artists, family members, friends, and strangers. What these disparate teachers have collectively helped open my eyes to is the vast expanse of sexual identity and expression; of the limitless ways in which human beings find their sense of self and their place in the world; how they experience safety, companionship, love, and pleasure. Yet, as much as I work to be a responsible ally to the LGBTQ+ community, I am fully aware that I will never be a member of that community. By virtue of my identity and orientation, I am forever operating with limited information. As well-intentioned as my words might be on matters of equality and justice for my LGBTQ+ friends, I will never be speaking for anyone other than myself, which is where I begin today.On the last day of Pride Month, author Matthew Vines published an op-ed in the New York Times [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/30/opinion/queer-gay-rights.html] in which he declares his identity as a gay man, as opposed to a queer man. Further, he alleges that the “queer” label and those who embrace it have contributed to decreasing support for the gay community, especially among Conservatives. Vines states in his piece that he believes the word queer “carries an adversarial charge that ‘gay’ does not,” as it has come to embody a broader, more politically engaged progressive activism; that it displays a confrontational posture that is essentially putting straight people off and rewinding the progress of the gay community. This feels somewhat shortsighted. Vines is a former Evangelical and author of the incredibly important book God and the Gay Christian, which eloquently made the Biblical case for same-sex relationships. It was a game-changer that helped foster vitally important conversations within the Church. As an LGBTQ-affirming pastor, when it arrived, it was invaluable in giving me a place to meet people in my churches for substantive conversations about sexuality. This all makes Matthew’s words in the Times concerning. He knows the Bible, and he knows the Christians who wield it like a hammer, and for some reason, he seems to be overestimating them. Over the last two days, I’ve been poring over comment sections, watching videos, and reading nuanced essays that reflect the diversity of the LGBTQ+ experience regarding the word queer. Some were raised in a time when it was a dehumanizing slur, and as a result, will always carry negative connotations and always be triggering. Others claim both gay and queer, depending on the context, choosing to speak to their individual experience and their members as part of a collective. Still others have come to embrace queer as a massive umbrella, embodying the sweeping scope of sexual identity and expression. Many others use queer to embody not just identity and orientation, but the vast intersectionality of all vulnerable, oppressed, historically marginalized communities. None of these perspectives is more right than any other, but each comes with costs. In the comment section of my friend, Pastor Brandan Robertson [https://www.facebook.com/brandanjrobertson/], a gay man wrote: Gay men don’t identify as queer. You need to respect that. We have nothing in common with nonbinary or trans people. It is insulting to have decades of fighting for gay rights coopted by communities that have nothing to do with being gay. Gay rights are not fringe rights. This is precisely the worrisome sentiment I find in Vine’s opinion piece: the idea that liberation ever happens in a vacuum. The truth is, gay men do have something in common with nonbinary and trans people and queer people (and every non-conforming human being): the Republican Evangelical Right despises them and wants to take away their fundamental freedoms simply because of their identity and orientation, just as much as it wants to take them from the noisier, messier queer people.This violent Christian Nationalist movement in America will not allow any non-cisgender-heterosexual expression, and Matthew seems to be in denial about that. Right now, this christo-fascist GOP regime is loudly targeting the transgender community because that is the easiest way to rally their phobic base. Articles like Matthew's seem to be throwing nonbinary and trans people under the bus, believing they are somehow preventing the acceptance of him in the minds of people that will never come.As someone who aspires to be a responsible ally, I respect every human being's personal perspective on these words and how they impact their own experience, Matthew Vines’ included. I completely respect his position regarding his own life and the way he wishes to exist in the world. I would never question that for him or anyone. We are all the authorities over our own humanity. I would never ask him to embrace queerness as a label any more than I would ask him to embrace heterosexuality. Yet, I do feel that his words about the queer community seem to be born out of the misplaced feeling that he can somehow evade the Right's disdain and their punitive violence by distancing himself from supposedly "less palatable" expressions of sexuality, but that seems myopic to me. As a white gay man, Vines may feel he is distinct from a black trans woman (and of course he is), but to the hateful Evangelicals steering us into theocracy, there is no difference whatsoever.To these phobic zealots, trans people are nonbinary people, are gay people, are nonconforming people, are lesbian people, are bisexual people. Further, they are immigrant people and black people and poor people and women. It seems as though Matthew is choosing to lean away from the collective liberation of all marginalized people in the hopes of finding safety in the sexual and political expression of least resistance. To all members of the LGBTQIA+ community, your voices here truly matter. How do you feel about Matthew’s Op-Ed, my reaction to it, or the label of queer? I would greatly appreciate your perspective. Thank you! The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe [https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Donald Trump is a Rapist. His Followers Can Never Be Forgiven For Supporting Him.

(Warning: this article contains depictions of sexual violence and may be triggering for survivors of assault) Donald Trump is a court-adjudicated rapist. This is not speculation. It is not conjecture. It’s not a Left-Wing talking point. This is documented, established fact. It was unequivocally declared by a judge. It has been repeatedly upheld in the courts. He is a rapist. And to any decent human being, that would have been a deal-breaker. It wasn’t for them. Donald Trump’s name is listed tens of thousands of times in the files documenting one of the most prolific and vile child trafficking rings in history, orchestrated by a man with whom he was a close friend and collaborator, one he traveled with. partied with, and corresponded with. For people with normal ethical standards, this would be a stark, uncrossable red line. For them, it proved not to be. Donald Trump has been accused by dozens of women of rape, sexual abuse, and physical violence, including a woman who testified before the FBI that Trump raped her when she was just 13 years old. For actual followers of Jesus, this would all be stomach-turning and condemned as the darkest kind of evil. For them, it hasn’t been. For tens of millions of our family members, lifelong friends, neighbors, coworkers, and classmates, none of this has mattered. His well-documented brutality has never been a liability. Despite a vast and reprehensible body of work, filled with proven sexual assault, alleged pedophilia, boasts about forced affection, credible accusations, and vicious public verbal attacks on women, he still receives their undying allegiance. Instead of joining decent humanity in dragging him and his accomplices into the raking light of legal accountability for their atrocities against the most vulnerable, they obfuscate, they feign ignorance, they move the goalposts, and they slander the victims. For all their performative sermonizing about protecting girls and young women, Trump’s supporters have shown through their silence, through their refusal to acknowledge reality, and through their steadfast adoration no matter how disgusting the revelations that they simply don’t give a damn. Unthinkable violence against children, sadistic degradation of women, absolutely monstrous allegations of assault; they’re all trumped by the pathetic cultic affection they have for a man who in any other sphere of life would be a pariah where good people gather. They have put political wins, Supreme Court Seats, and the cheap high they get off hurting people vicariously through him above the dignity and safety of other human beings. In the face of legal reckoning, he has received the protection of the highest seat of power in this nation, one they’ve helped him retain. They know what he’s done, and it has not dampened their passion. And this, perhaps as much as any moral or ethical malpractice they’ve engaged in to support him (and there has been so much), cannot be something we let them off the hook for, no matter what they say after he is no longer in power or no longer walking this earth. When time and justice catch up to him, when his cancerous regime is finally dismantled, and some kind of normalcy and stability return to our nation, their breathless worship of a violent, sadistic sexual deviant will be their legacy. One day soon, they will deny their affiliations, try to gaslight us into thinking we didn’t see what we saw, and plead ignorance of what has always been clear. We must never let them forget. He is who he is, and his supporters are who they are. Donald Trump is a rapist. He will always be a rapist. His supporters will always have passionately supported a rapist. They cannot be excused for that. They cannot be forgiven for that. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. GET MY NEW CHILDREN’S BOOK HERE! [https://pavlovitzdesign.com/products/a-signed-copy-of-here-and-now-and-small-and-close-for-by-john-pavlovitz] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe [https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Supergirl Didn't Fall. She Burned Up Entering the Manosphere

Supergirl opened this weekend to disastrous box office numbers, but its fate was sealed long before that, and it has very little to do with the quality of the film or the performance of its cast. The second offering in the James Gunn-curated DCU didn’t burn up on its entry into theaters. It was killed by a thousand Kryptonite darts in the weeks and months preceding, by an increasingly crowded YouTube/TikTok/IG landscape of monetized fandom that, as in every other facet of media, now runs on vitriol and negativity. Supergirl became its latest and perhaps most predictable target. The film’s lead, House of Dragons alum Milly Alcock, was dogged from the moment her casting was announced, with a disturbing amount of venom hurled at her physical appearance (something that has reached a disgraceful zenith since the film’s release). Add to that a female screenwriter in Ana Nogueira (along with the rabid disdain for Gunn’s supposed “woke agenda” from aspiring alpha male online gatekeepers), and from the beginning, the Manosphere was simply not going to allow it to succeed. A fierce torrent of dudebro think pieces, panel conversations, and supposed scoops flooded social media, each one working to one-up the others with sky-is-falling histrionics, Yellow-Sun-hot takes, and click-garnering thumbnails. More than any superhero movie since the first Captain Marvel film, have performative fragile males worked so hard to poison public sentiment before a second of footage was released. Alcock especially has been hounded by criticism over her physicality and her perceived lack of enthusiasm on the press circuit (Serious, “Maybe you should smile more” vibes). YouTube accounts such as Nerdrotic Daily and Geeks + Gamers, whose stable of mortally insecure, insufferable incels have been among those most ruthlessly attacking the actress in an effort to grow their already massive viewership among other easily-lured young men weaned on Conservative sexism and toxic masculinity. And, then, of course, there are the legions of perpetually lathered-up, zealous Zach Snyder fanboys who have been sitting vigil for the last couple of decades, and who want so desperately for the DCU to fail so that they can once again work themselves into a public frenzy to restore their beloved auteur to the lofty place they believe he alone deserves. But it isn’t easily intimidated conservative men only, as plenty of female content creators gleefully joined in the incessant crepe-hanging over the last few months, proving that it isn’t just the guys who are capable of manufacturing misogyny or being driven to corrosivity by declining revenue streams and oversaturated online spaces. To curry the favor of their largely male audiences, many women in these spaces have face-shamed Alcock with juvenile AI-generated caricatures. And let’s be clear: art’s interpretation is subjective, and there’s nothing wrong with criticisms grounded in substance, or admonishments about straying from the source material ( as happened here), but that’s not what this is, as evidenced by the giddy celebrations of the film’s financial failure among the men largely filling these spaces. Supergirl is a flawed yet well-crafted comic book movie. Alcock, especially, does wonderful work embodying the titular character and deserves to get further chances to bring Kara Zor-El to audiences. While it by no means reaches the stratospheric heights of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, or the Russo Brothers’ Infinity War, it sure as heck isn’t Morbius, Black Adam, or Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, either. The sad truth is that even in comic book spaces that should be more evolved than other media landscapes, women actors, writers, artists, and directors still have to do three times the work to get a fraction of the credit, and in an exponentially expanding virtual landscape where the lowest common denominator is courted and women are targeted, we’re going to continue to see these stories play out. Supergirl is a perfect example of how toxic content creators have ruined the experience of anticipating and seeing a comic book movie, spewing out a steady stream of negativity, speculation, rumor-mongering, and doom forecasting. By constantly needing to compete in the oversaturated market, they build their brands on grievance, creating ever-more incendiary content and engendering so much hatred toward a film before it’s even out that it doesn’t have a chance to be received on its merits. Combine that with the reality that 90 percent of these creators are dudes or women trying to draw their gaze, and a female-led superhero movie faces impossible scrutiny.Supergirl didn’t fall, at least not completely. She simply burned up in the Manosphere. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. 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Courting Fascism: Facing Trump's Supreme Coup

When the law fails the people, where do they go? When the highest court in a nation is compromised to the point that it disregards the law and becomes predatory toward its citizenry, what recourse does that citizenry have? What happens when the most powerful minority in a country weaponizes the very systems designed to protect its most vulnerable? America is about to find out. Despite his and his party’s relentless efforts, Donald Trump could not quite successfully manage a bloodless or bloody coup in the wake of the 2020 Presidential election, but it turns out they didn’t need to. They’d already done mortal damage to the Republic from the inside. Over the last two decades, through a perfect storm of Republican opposition, Democratic Party malpractice, a prolonged political imbalance in Congress, and the untimely death of a Justice, Trump and his party have commandeered the Supreme Court and are rapidly rewinding the clock of human and civil rights here to a place that would have been unthinkable to many, just a decade ago. With only a few months before the most pivotal midterm elections in our lifetimes, the reproductive rights of women, the fates of hundreds of thousands of immigrants and naturalized citizens, environmental protections, the marriages and freedoms of LGBTQ people, and the viability of elections are all near or at the precipice. The velocity and scale of the losses are beyond what most people’s minds can fathom. Every day people ask me what we can do to stop the coming flood of fascism, and far wiser human beings than myself struggle with answers, especially if November doesn’t manage to catalyze the majority into the voting booth in numbers that we haven’t seen before. If the theocracy being built right now is solidified in Congress later this year, we will be in uncharted territory that none of us can predict or imagine. It may require personal sacrifices, legal consequences, and relational schisms that our nation hasn’t had to face since the Civil War. So what are we who are here and grieving all this, supposed to do with our grief and our outrage over what this nation is and what we fear it could become? The answer is: everything we can. People of faith, morality, and conscience each need to take stock of what we value here, of the freedoms we still do have, of the people and causes we care about, of the kind of place we don’t want it to become—and live boldly, fully, and passionately in light of all of it. We also need to make our presence felt by these treasonous, compromised Justices who have chosen to abandon the law, abdicate their responsibility, disregard the common good, and do the bidding of a traitorous, felonious wannabe dictator. Within the limits of what is lawful, we should never allow these people to have a moment’s peace in public. Short of anything illegal or violent, they should become pariahs in the places decent, patriotic Americans gather, and their shame should be preserved by all of us and by the history books. November is not yet here, which means there is still time to write a better story if we are willing to spend ourselves on behalf of that story; to stay in the small and the close and to embody the America we believe is worth fighting for and the nation we dream of living in. If we recognize our interdependence, disparate Americans need to move together despite our relatively small differences, to push back an existential threat to all of us. In the face of a Supreme Court that no longer operates in the interest of the law or the people, and of a political party whose collective soul has long been sold, the rest of us need to do our best to dissent. We need to embrace what is within our hands: our relationships, our work, our resources, our energy, our economic influence, our shared voice, our shared vote—and to leverage those things in the cause of life, liberty, and happiness as best we can and hope that these things are enough. And if they prove not to be, we’ll need to wake up on that unimaginable day and keep fighting. Humanity is worth it. The planet is worth it. And the America that still could be is worth it, too. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe [https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

America's 250th Birthday Feels More Like a Funeral

F*ck the fireworks and flip the flags. For actual patriotic Americans, this July 4th isn’t a party; it’s a funeral. There is nothing to celebrate here. We shouldn’t be singing right now; we should be grieving.We should be sitting vigil for the country we could have had but may never see.We should be mourning over how little independence has trickled down to the people in the streets.We should be lamenting how commonplace hatred has become in this supposed “sweet land of Liberty.” Most of all, we should be mortified that no matter how it happened, Democracy has all but died on our watch here. For these reasons, we are the United States of Embarrassment. As our nation nears the quarter millennium mark, we have collectively failed those who came before by allowing the ascension of the very fascism millions of our forebears courageously fought, bled, and died driving back into the sewers of history. The moral cancer they defeated on the other side of the planet, we have allowed to make a home here. Mass abductions by government-deputized goons are not relegated to some ancient, jittery black-and-white newsreels from half a world away; they unfold in live-streamed phone videos from the streets of this alleged land of the free, showing masked, traitorous cowards draped in the colors they aren’t worthy of wearing. Death camps are not the crumbled carcasses of a foreign failure of humanity that serve as memorial sites, cautionary tales for decent people; they are the newly christened pride and joy of monstrous men and women who have the stratospheric gall to costume themselves in the flag that actual courageous lovers of this nation wore as they expired on our behalf. The grim propaganda military parades of unrepentant sociopathic dictators aren’t trapped in the amber blocks of discolored textbook photos; they are real-time travesties disgracing our National Mall. And all of it: the breathtaking brutality against our most vulnerable, the unthinkable Constitutional assaults, the collective moral collapse of an entire party, and the disregard for the laws of the land, is packaged in a facade of patriotism that would be laughable were it not a deadly, sinful, vomit-inducing farce. This is the paradox that decent Americans find themselves in. Our essential liberties have never been more at risk, our electoral process never more assailed, our national sovereignty never more tenuous, our elemental freedoms never more in doubt. And yet, the patriotic fervor by this felonious, soulless narcissist, his twisted cadre of cosplaying Christian ghouls, and their allegiance-pledging, flag-waving surrogates has never been greater. This is by design. Weaponized patriotism is an intoxicant for easily manipulated people whose identities are shaped by those they hate, the neighbors and strangers they’ve been convinced are threats to be eradicated and dangers to be sent away. With enough star-spangled rhetoric, rockets’ red glare spectacle, and red, white, and blue dog-and-pony distractions, you can make such people believe that they are winning, even while they are being led down the parade route and straight into the slaughterhouse. And so this year, the anthems will play, the flags will wave, the bottle rockets will ascend, the M-80s will go off, and Fascism will quietly enter through the side door while everyone is distracted by the spectacle. Everyone, except for those of us who still remember what the hell this beautiful experiment was reaching for to begin with. This is why these songs of freedom will indeed ring hollow this July 4th, because those of us who love this country realize how far we are from incarnating the glory of the songs we will be unable to sing. We will be grieving, not because this country deserves better than this party and the amoral monster gorging himself on our citizenry, but because right now it does deserve them; because we wish it to be something far greater than their ceremonial patriotism, ornamental religion, and phony pro-life zeal they wear when it benefits them. We see what a farce this all is: watching a joyless, mindless death cult led by rapists, racists, and career criminals making a mockery of an America whose diversity, plurality, and liberty they despise and are actively eliminating. So yes, we’ll be loving our country fiercely this July 4th and beyond by not letting it remain what it currently is and by opposing the fraudulence of their performative love of country. We will be working and protesting and loving and building and caring and voting and pushing it to become a place deserving of the festivities and the fireworks. When freedom rings for all of us, then we’ll sing, and then we’ll celebrate. Until then, we will grieve the death of what might have been. The Beautiful Mess by John Pavlovitz is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. ORDER MY CHILDREN’S BOOK TODAY! [https://pavlovitzdesign.com/products/a-signed-copy-of-here-and-now-and-small-and-close-for-by-john-pavlovitz] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe [https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]