Gay student says "Coach" Tim Walz protected him from homophobic bullies

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Gay student says "Coach" Tim Walz protected him from homophobic bullies - LGBTQ Nation
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Headline undersells how he did this during the 90's during the Don't Ask Don't Tell era. Was not nearly as socially or politically acceptable then as it is now in the US to do that

And he didn’t just protect one kid. The football coach, the manliest man in the entire school, was the faculty sponsor for the Gay Straight Alliance club that welcomed everyone. In the 1990s.

Meanwhile the high school football coach in my high school (2000s) used school funds to buy his team of bigots booze and received a sternly worded "please don't do that" letter as punishment. Guy was a raging homophobe.

Seriously. In the late 90s and early aughts it was common to hear teenage boys and young men throwing around words like f_g and using “gay” in a derogatory way. This was common even in liberal areas and among groups that weren’t outwardly homophobic. We have come a long way in a relatively short period of time.

You're underselling just how homophobic we were back then.

In the 1990 General Social Survey, only 12% said that gay sex wasn't wrong.

In 1988 (closest year to the 90s the question was asked) only 3% of Americans "Strongly agreed" the gay people should have the right to marry.

Also, in 1992, 19% of non-black respondents believed there should be a law against interracial marriage, which is super disturbing.

Dude, where the fuck did they find this guy? I never heard of him and BAM...dude is saintlier than most of the Catholic Church.

It’s not hard to be saintlier than the catholic church. Just don’t systematically abuse kids and you’re good.

Yea, I guess that bar was on the floor there, wasn't it?

The bar was on the floor and the catholic church picked up a shovel

They had to lower the bar to Hell since some of their saints are there. For example, Mother Teresa’s down there jilling off to torture porn.

I had never seen the term "jilling off" before, thank you.

Its because he just seriously did his job. And apparently thats super rare in todays america. He did politics and good policy without it being a media circus. He didn't do it for attention and visibility. No scandals, no media stunts.

This is what politics shoud be. Not that media circus it is in the US with the goal being to have the most headlines and the most press attention not to make good politics.

The US election circus still is so weird to me, watching from Europe. I get a bit of campaigning but this has sports levels of insanity already.

My boss and coworker were fangirling when Trump 'won' the debate against biden. I've legit seen them do the same thing with sports talk. Nevermind that Trump didn't actually say anything of substance or truthful during all of that. I just didn't acknowledge them.

To put this into perspective for all you Americans: In my country at least, we don't have "rallies" at all. It's not a thing. We have political debates and news broadcasts regularly where politicians from opposing parties are invited to speak their case, that's it. Of course, parties also have stands in public places where they give out pamphlets and promote their party, but in those places you'll likely find stands from a bunch of parties.

The way you do campaigning in the US is absurd to me.

That's exactly right. People here think of it as sport as well. That's why we're stuck in this cycle.

To answer your question. Minnesota. They found him in Minnesota.

He's been amazing as our governor. Go check out all the things that were passed in the past two years with a one vote majority.

He tried to pass a bill banning corporations from buying or owning single family homes.

I think the right wing shot it down but what an absolute gigachad.

I'm glad I voted for him. Haha. I've been happy with my decision.

I saw your reply in my Inbox and hoped it was a reply on a Walz post and not the Ventura one.

There's actually a lot of great politicians that most people haven't heard of because they're too boring for our 24/7 news cycle to care about. Walz has just been quietly being an excellent governor to Minnesota, like how Pritzker is doing a pretty good job as governor of Illinois or how Whitmer is doing a pretty good job as governor of Michigan. There's not much of a reason to learn about politicians that don't represent you though, so these kinds of working politicians don't get much attention.

i think this is just like, legally mandated in the midwest. You just have to be moderately based, at all times.

Lol not in Iowa. It's right there with Texas and Florida. In some ways even worse.

iowa doesn't count, it's slipknot land, that's one of the two interesting things it's done in the last century :)

Lmao, what's the other one? Haha

uh, probably make corn.

I'm being charitable, i'm sure they've done something else interesting, but i couldn't tell you off the top of my head.

The thing that's amazing is that Walz did these things in the 1990s, when it was still reasonably common to fire teachers for any kind of hint they might be gay. That takes real courage.

I'm a person that regularly forgives people for "sins" committed in a time where what they were doing was considered normal by that time's standards but regressive by today's standards.

Honestly, it just feels refreshing to have a guy that's actually been pushing his ideals ahead of the status-quo and hasn't shirked from being "too radical".

Walz singlehandedly unified the Dems in a day with AOC and that scum ass Manchin endorsing him. That's fucking crazy

Working class policies cross party lines and its why places like Fox spend so much time and money demonizing people like AOC. They saw how easily Bernie was able to talk to republicans and really reach them on both Fox News pannels and on town halls on the campaign trail in 2016. If the Democrats want to pull republicans instead of relying only on higher turnout people like Walz are exactly how you do it.

I'm really just reiterating what you're saying but workers built this country. Literally! The CEO "sets the Vision" or whatever bullshit, but we all actually accomplish it, daily. If some entitled asshole sells your company and another buys it, not much would change (aside from the benefits you're probably losing). We, as a country need to take better care of the people that actually do 99.9% of all the work...

I'm not a huge fan of Manchin myself, but at the very least he's pretty upfront about what his priorities are (even if they're not good) and hasn't boarded the crazy train - as opposed to RFK, for example - so it doesn't really surprise me that he'd rather support a down-to-earth midwestern school teacher with progressive policies over whatever the fuck's going on in Trump/Vance world

Oh yeah? Well JD Vance protected some living room furniture from dying alone having never experienced the joy of repeated penetration.

Good old Jorkin DePeanus Vance

I think we just call him Vladimir Futon now.

You mean registered sectional offender Vance?

Lmao Republicans and tanking their elections with their VP picks. Name a more iconic duo.

If Sarah Palin gave us Trump, what will JD Vance give us?

Omg I would fucking LOVE IT if he became known as Coach over that Alabama Fuck who held up key military promotions in Congress because the DoD put out guidance saying women seeking abortions in restricted states could take convalescent leave to do so. He wants so badly for everyone to think of him as "Coach". Fuck yeah Walz, dont let him have that!

Went to highschool in an Alabama school. Football is a religion, and the football coaches were given the respect of preachers. They were also given cushy teaching jobs like health or drivers ed. They were generally not very bright.

The school might be run down and underfunded, but the football field was immaculate with huge bleachers, the locker rooms were nice.

In contrast, I had one coach teacher that taught history. Baseball coach. He taught me to love history. His tests were almost all long answer, didn't care about dates. He wanted you demonstrate understanding of the causes and results of events. Brilliant man with deep knowledge and love of his subject.

Got tired of the two week long headaches and quit football, switched to cross country even though I wasn't built for it. Forget the term, but my body type is large muscles and bones.

Had a cross country coach. He didn't care if you won races or were able to be very competitive. He just expected you to do your best and would push the hell out of you. I saw him take lots of fat little freshman and turned them into lean endurance machines over several years. Don't remember anyone ever quitting the team. I will always remember him leaning out the window of his 60's pickup yelling at kids to push through and push harder. He was poor, shitty salary, tires on his truck were bald and leaky, he had screws in them he couldn't remove cause they would go flat.

Those two men earned the title of Coach in my life.

Can't wait to see this in one of Trump's ads, framing it as a bad thing.

As a football coach, Tampon Tim would often get very close with gay students

I apologize in advance if they steal this headline 😬

Another reason for the right to hate him.

When the worst fucking scum in the country hate a guy, he must be doing a lot of shit right :D

Dude seems to have a solid track record embracing the golden rule. I'm into it.

Honest question, and probably one with an obvious answer, but this guy seems too good to be true at times - why hasn't he considered a run for president?

Similarly, I'm surprised that the attack line isn't to ask him both this, and to ask him if he endorses some of the less saintly things that Harris might have done in politics and prosecuting.

Because good people - the people who would make the best leaders, aren't narcissistic enough to believe they should run for president. They're happy helping in whatever way they can, but they generally don't have the audacity to think they have any business trying to run for the most powerful position in government. Partially because they're humble, but also they aren't in it for power, they just want to help people.

There's definitely a conversation to be had that the role of president should be one of humility and neighborliness, but there's a group of voters in America who just want somebody who can throw their dick around on the world stage and intimidate the rest of the world like a pro wrestler. And most politician types try to be both the helpful neighbor and pro wrestler, but end up seeming fake and not very genuine because usually both the macho and the neighborly aspects are an act, and they just want power.

I think good people try to help those around them, they think more in terms on the local level, they want to be more hands on in helping and less about commanding militaries or directing a huge bureaucratic behemoth like the US government. That's for people with a lust for power for the sake of power or for building a legacy or whatever. I keep waiting for some sort of crack or bad thing to suddenly pop up about Walz and he just seems like a genuinely nice guy, it's kind of weird, but not in a Republican kind of way.

please let "republican" be the new word for "awful" in common vernacular. Ex: "I need to take out my trash, its starting to smell republican"

4 syllable words are very out of fashion, I don't think it can become slang.

He didn't have the kind of national profile it takes to pull that off. He's not perfect either — just absolutely fabulous compared with somebody like Vance who seems determined to serve vampires.

Even in the event that the article is talking about, he at least had some logic behind it

When Walz was elected a few months later, he did try to halt the pipeline’s development. Early in his first term, Walz continued a legal challenge from his predecessor’s administration against Line 3, which he continued until 2020.

But after that legal challenge was rejected, Walz declined to use his executive powers to stop the pipeline, and his administration approved key construction permits that allowed the pipeline to move forward. He told MinnPost in 2019 that he believed a unilateral decision “would violate principles of ‘checks and balances’ between the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government.”

“If you fall on the side that says, ‘Well, the governor should just stop this; it’s the right thing to do,’ then you would be making the case that the next governor should just build one, without any environmental review, without any process involved,” Walz said at the time

Which I don't 100% agree with but at least see where he's coming from.

While I 100% agree with his reasoning, I hate to point out that the next governor might not care much about precedence.

Honest question, and probably one with an obvious answer, but this guy seems too good to be true at times - why hasn’t he considered a run for president?

probably because kamala was the VP, walz is literally out of the middle of nowhere land midwestern US. The VP role is perfect for him, if this goes well, he might run for president afterwards.

As a potential VP he's somewhat in line of potential future presidents though, no?

I don't think good people actively seen major roles of power, at least not within govt .

You know I didn’t even care whether he was a successful coach or not, I was waiting for the republicans to attack his coaching record or something like that. Turns out he was a damn good coach.

Also, the fact that the openly gay student felt comfortable approaching Walz and proposing his idea means they knew Walz was probably supportive before even asking. That says Walz must have been displaying his character openly.

Had me in the first half, not gonna lie.

Yeah, I saw "Gay student says coach" and went "oh no, not AGAIN?!?!" Then saw "Tim Walz" and was briefly all "fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck" until I read the rest.

How bad is it that headlines about terrible abuse are so much more common than positive stories that my brain just went to bad first thing.

One day I want to see news as something other than filler to grab ad revenue.

I'd like institutional reform in the athletic sector too, but I can't decide which is less likely to actually happen.

If the positive news is about something new being created or solved, then sure.

But this really shouldn't be news. "Person helped another person" should not be strange enough to warrant reporting on, much less from someone we're electing to be a leader.

Breaking news: Multiple highschoolers accuse Tim Waltz of being a really great guy

what a great pick that guy is, I hope they do well in November

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We also rate [LGBTQ Nation] Mostly Factual in reporting, rather than High, due to not labeling opinion pieces, which may mislead the reader

Failed Fact Checks: None in the Last 5 years

lol, dude who makes up these ratings can get absolutely fucked for expecting an LGBTQ news website to fucking both sides LGBTQ rights.

This rating is not "expecting" anything. This assessment is accurate, it IS left leaning and mostly factual, with unlabeled opinion pieces... What is the problem with identifying that? All news sites are biased, it's just how it is

Rating it as though they’ve published something that is untrue (what the average person expects from a factuality rating) when they explicitly haven’t failed fact checks is stupid AF.

Just because an opinion piece doesn't fail a fact-check doesn't mean it's not an opinion piece, and it should be labeled as such

So factor that into the bias rating, not the factuality rating, because that is about bias and not whether or not they have published things that are untrue.

Presenting an opinion as fact (such as not labeling opinion pieces) would be a factuality issue no?

Presenting things that are untrue is a factuality issue. You are describing bias.

So you're saying I'm right because an opinion is an opinion and not true or untrue. Presenting an opinion as either is a factuality issue.

So you're saying I'm right because an opinion is an opinion and not true or untrue.

If it’s not untrue then it shouldn’t affect the factuality rating, not sure why this is hard to get.

Incidentally as another user pointed out in this thread, LGBTQ Nation does label their opinion pieces as such. Until MBFC presents evidence otherwise, I’m going to conclude that what they have deemed “undisclosed opinions” are things like “trans kids exist and deserve protection”.

Did you not see the screenshot that was posted? It is labeled.

Opinions aren’t facts, though. (Even if they contain no misinformation.)

Again, I think the average person is going to see factuality rating and read it as “how much of their reporting is true or untrue” and not “what amount of their reporting could potentially contain opinions according to the guy that runs MBFC”.

If you sell opinion pieces as news then yes, that's not truthful and a completely valid criticism as people could misread it as actual news. You should rather ask why they did not fix this yet, which would not just improve their rating quite a bit, but also be an overall improvement for the readers and the overall concept of sharing information (and it is trivially easy to do so too). Crying about that feels rather weird and like agenda pushery.

Considering opinion pieces are labeled maybe MBFC should either update the rating or give specific examples.

Feel free to contact them if you think they're not up to date.

I kinda think it’s their responsibility to keep their site updated when they ask for money for the express purpose of doing that.

They literally only have donations set up and almost 10k sites listed. Please stop the entitled shit when it is pretty clear that the whole site relies heavily on user feedback too. Either you join in making it better and becoming a more decent human being in the process, or you can continue to cry about a free service not being 100% up to date. And lets be honest here, if you'd truly care about that news site and its entry then you would've done the former already.

Are you inferring that it’s not possible for an LBGTQ+ publication to misrepresent facts?

To me the rating is less about how “pro,” “anti” or “in-between” something is, and more about factual reporting of details

Are you inferring that it’s not possible for an LBGTQ+ publication to misrepresent facts?

No, which is why my comment specifically pointed out they failed no fact checks.

Also seems like they are labelled

I wonder how often they update the ratings?

Plus, overall, the difference between:

Donald Trump was a terrible president

And:

OPINION: Donald Trump was a terrible president

Does not seem like it warrants downgrading a website's fact rating. But if it was:

OPINION: Donald Trump was a terrible president and was able to fly unassisted

Then they need to be downgraded. The opinion label is basically irrelevant

While I get your point, I think it makes complete sense, and a big difference, when opinion pieces are labelled.