Barbara Bry Comes Out of the GOP Closet Dressed in QAnon Garb
Mayoral candidate Barbara Bry’s campaign claims they haven’t gone over to the dark side.
As if the “THEY’re coming for your neighborhood” language, the support of worker exploitation by gig companies, and supporting the “treatment first” approach to homelessness weren’t enough, Bry jumped in on the side of a QAnon campaign during a KUSI interview on Wednesday.
Bry also went after Gloria for voting in favor of the controversial SB 145. The controversial bill now gives judges the discretion over sex-offender registration in cases involving teenagers between the ages of 14 and 17, and adults who are no more than 10 years older than the teenager. <<<<[Misleading statement]
Opponents say the legislation (SB 145) is an effort to “normalize pedophilia.” <<<<[Language part of a QAnon campaign]
Current California law automatically adds adults to the state’s sex offender registry if they have sexual relations with minors. <<< [Misleading statement]
https://twitter.com/SteveLessner/status/1306433782744932352?s=20
Statements about SB 145 were published on candidate Bry’s Twitter feed, but taken down after being called out by Equality California.
https://twitter.com/RyanTrabuco/status/1306370041101742080?s=20
It’s no wonder that Bry’s jumped on the “perverts are coming for your children bandwagon;” Republicans throughout California have also picked up on this misinformed campaign. San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer joined the GOP tweet storm.
To be clear, here’s what SB 145 actually does:
SB145 allows judges to exercise discretion in placing an individual on the sex offender registry for non-forceable sex acts other than vaginal penetration (which was already allowed).It did not change the criminality of sex with a minor (which remains illegal) nor did it change the criminal penalties for breaking the law.
Via News 8:
Here's the way Senator Wiener explained it:
"Let’s say you have a situation where you have an 18-year-old and 16-year-old who are dating each other," said Senator Wiener. "If they are having vaginal intercourse, say it's a boy and a girl and they’re having vaginal intercourse, it is statutory rape but the judge does not have to put the 18-year-old on the sex offender registry. The judge can look at the facts of the case and say 'Is it appropriate? Is this person a danger?'"
"If it is two boys or two girls, an 18-year-old and a 16-year-old, and they’re having say oral sex or sex other than vaginal-penile intercourse, the judge must put the 18-year-old on the sex offender registry no matter what. The judge has no discretion," Wiener said.
SB 145 changes that.
Much is being made of a ten year difference in ages between those accused and victims; it was already the law for straights and has been for 76 years. It is icky as far as I’m concerned (Assm. Lorena Gonzalez agrees). But there isn’t any campaign here to legalize pedophilia.
The involvement of QAnon, which proselytizes about the existence of blood sucking pedophiles who are somehow being vanquished by Donald Trump, began with a social media campaign aimed at State Senator Scott Wiener, author of SB 145.
Via the Guardian:
FUCKING FILTH. BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF,” read one representative message that accused Wiener of “creating a law to allow pedophiles to be charged on a lesser degree”. Others fantasized about dragging Wiener’s body behind a car until he died, accused him of worshipping “Moloch”, or declared an intention to find and kill him. One meme posted on Instagram featured an image of Wiener photoshopped to enlarge his nose and add sidelocks, a yarmulke and a Jewish prayer shawl. Over the next month, Stewart and Wiener were left to confront a constant digital onslaught of death threats, homophobia, antisemitism and baseless allegations of pedophilia.
When SB 145 was introduced in January 2019, it had the official support (and still does) of LGBTQ+ groups, prosecutors, police chiefs, public defenders, civil liberties groups and advocates for survivors of sexual assault.
While “classic” QAnon memes and content are aggressively pro-Trump, militaristic and often include blatantly antisemitic tropes and references, #SaveOurChildren has provided QAnon with a decidedly softer aesthetic and rhetorical appeal.
Rather than enticing new recruits with the promise to unveil military intelligence secrets about the supposed evils of the Clintons and Obamas, #SaveOurChildren captures attention with exaggerated statistics about the prevalence of child sex trafficking, then draws susceptible readers down the rabbit hole of increasingly implausible falsehoods. It’s a softer, gentler “red pill” than traditional QAnon material, but the result – blatantly false beliefs about Democrats sexually abusing children in order to extract a life-extending chemical from their blood – remains the same.
QAnon’s conspiracy craziness has spread throughout the Republican Party, probably because there are no reality based excuses for what Dear Leader says and does.
...in recent weeks, Donald Trump has praised QAnon followers, a QAnon-backing candidate has all but assured her election to Congress in November, and the #SaveTheChildren hashtag campaign has introduced QAnon to millions of potential new recruits. On 15 September, Trump retweeted a statement that appeared to accuse Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee, of pedophilia.
“The Republican party has been deeply infected by QAnon,” Wiener told the Guardian. “We’ve seen this kind of mass political infection before, all the way back to the Salem witch trials and McCarthyism. Unfortunately, there are always going to be opportunistic politicians who sense that there are people who think this and jump at the chance to get political support. It’s shameful, but it’s reality, and that’s what’s happening with QAnon.
Lately TV station KUSI has given prominent coverage to COVID-19 deniers, and all but become a GOP misinformation machine.
The interview with Mayoral candidate Barbara Bry gave the station’s personnel a chance to repeat those talking points, starting with the misinformation campaign being pushed by gig economy companies against AB5 and for Proposition 22.
Whether she walked into a trap by opting to comment on SB145 and didn’t know about the QAnon campaign makes little difference right now. She’s made her pitch to the right wingers in the area and it’s clear they are responding positively.
https://twitter.com/shawnjvandiver/status/1306320540139880448?s=20
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Meanwhile, as if things weren’t crazy enough in Washington DC...
https://twitter.com/benjaminokeefe/status/1306411851471826944?s=20
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