Alabama Mayor Kills Self After Right-Wing Blog Outs His Cross-Dressing
Haus@kbin.social to 
thedailybeast.com
Bubba Copeland shot himself in front of police on Friday, days after he begged 1819 News not to expose his private life.
Haus@kbin.social to
deleted by creator
I love what John Oliver said on his segment about I believe Lindsay Graham.
Paraphrasing, he could have helped usher in the change that would have made his lifestyle more acceptable and more inclusive. But he wanted power.
These people choose to be a Republican. They choose to associate with a party that is actively trying to eliminate the very people they are and the sad thing is that they think they are the exception. They think the party will accept them.
And the hard, harsh truth is that they are only accepted so long as it's convenient. I think he knew this and that's why he chose to end his life.
It's sad that he felt he had to do that. But I'm not holding my breath for the GOP to say that they learned a lesson from it.
Being a mayor of a small town and being a US Senator or even House Rep are two very different things. It is very likely that, despite being Republican, he did nothing to further Republicanism with the power that he did have.
Most of the time, mayors really just do small town mayor shit like approving a tree to be cut down or asking the state for a road to be fixed. They're not usually involved with politics in the way Lindsey fucking Graham is.
Yes and (?) was never antisemitic, beyond being member of the nazi party. (???)
If you are part of a party that stands STAUNCHELY against queers, you don't deserve solidarity for being queer.
How many of those are also hiding their sexuality/gender just because of the same reasons that you mentioned?
Im sorry for the guy that shot himself, but he was part of the problem. It doesn't matter the reason why someone is a church goer, Trump supporter, one less of them is always good.
Also a pastor, "shot himself in front of police during a welfare check." It also appears that his wife was aware and involved with the hobby (not with the suicide), presumably in a supporting way.
I may disagree very strongly with this guy's politics, but fuck the assholes who make this shameful.
@Poutinetown quotes from the article:
These are the assholes who make it shameful.
Leopard face eating moment
This is a rare example of the leopard eating its own face!
It's not a "rare example", it's the whole point of the leopard-eating-face thing. People support a political party and then react with shock when the party carries through with its promises in a way that hurts them.
It's not news when someone votes for the leopard and then sits back smugly while the leopard eats the faces of other people.
I'm referring specifically to the act of him killing himself.
Republicans have a track record of voting against their own interest and *shocked pikachu* oh no! These policies are hurting me??
This guy took it a step further by being the one to pull the trigger.
...if only that wasn't rare. If our nation's trash made a habit of taking itself out as this fucker did, a lot of problems would get fixed very quickly. The opposite is usually what happens - evil shits are like cockroaches.
Sadly this is a prime example.
'Ol Bubba knew the wolves would turn on him.
But anyway, what is with this. Is it that this secretive cross-dressing thing seems correlated with repressed sexual desires or what?
JCS covered that one Canadian colonel serial killer who would cross-dress, sneaking into women's homes.
Then I just watched this 48 Hours case about a dad who killed his son after they found pictures of him cross-dressing and literally eating his own shit.
Wtf?
People tend to sexualize the taboo. In a society where gender is seen as set in stone and comes with a bunch of stupid bullshit like what clothes it’s socially acceptable to wear some people will sexualize violating the taboos
Alright, not gonna lie that last one threw me for a loop.
Pretty sure it was the last part that caused him to do that, I think the gap between crossdressing and scatophagy (is that a word yet?) is pretty far.
Yeah I want a world where nobody is persecuted for this, even pieces of shit.
You’d think some empathy would be in order. However, judging from the comments made on the bird website, many people are actually proud of this happening.
This is tragic but I feel like shaking the people trying to shame or guilt the ones who outed and ridiculed the Mayor.
“Are you happy now?”
Yes, of course they are. The cruelty is the point.
This comment section is hilarious. Some people are praising his suicide simply because he was a part of the republican party, while others are saying that "no one deserves being bullied for being trans" yet what everyone seems to miss is this guy was a grade A pervert who was posting pictures of real children in his transition fetish memes that he posted online. He also stalked a local business woman and wrote erotica about taking over her life and becoming her through hormones and surgery then murdering her and replacing her. A real woman btw.
So much cognitive dissonance in this thread and I'm here for it.
Read up what he did here https://1819news.com/news/item/to-say-i-was-a-stalker-would-be-a-bit-of-an-understatement-curvy-transgender-smiths-station-mayor-copeland-wrote-fiction-about-murdering-real-life-local-businesswoman-assuming-her-identity
You posted the same article multiple times in this thread. I don't know that magazine but Wikipedia says about the source
Aren't there more trustworthy articles than a far right news site?
Yeah, it's a right wing propaganda rag. I wouldn't trust them reporting the weather without somehow blaming liberals and lgbtq.
The OP buried the lede intentionally or unintentionally. Dude was a grade A creeper and a psycho.
[CITATION NEEDED]
Christianity once again demonstrates it's outstanding moral virtues.
What a waste. Regardless of his political affiliations, it's sad that someone got bullied so hard that they decided to take their own life. It's what we fight for in the LGBTQ community and beyond- so nobody feels that their life is over if discovered. Nor should it be a big deal, regardless. It's what we've been fighting for since the Lavender Scare, and we'll keep fighting for a general sense of normalcy for everyday Americans, regardless of political orientation.
I think it's a good reminder that one of Hitler's closest "friends" and instrumental in the rise to power of the nazi party, was executed in the night of the Long knives. Ernst Rohm was publicly known to be gay. Due to this close relationship with Hitler, they determined it would weaken Hitler's image.
Copeland certainly won't be the last GOP casualty due to their bigoted policies.
Well, the fact that he was gay is perhaps a sidenote to the internal power struggle in the nazi Party, and the struggle between the SA and the SS. Hitler stayed in power by playing the people beneath him against each other, and Himmler was particularly ruthless in this regard to the very end of WW2.
Did not help Röhm that he was gay tho'
this wouldn't be the first comment thread to speculate about the gayness of Nazis and Hitler, but i'm here for it
https://www.mediaite.com/news/mayor-commits-suicide-after-conservative-website-publishes-photos-of-him-in-womens-clothing/
Maybe we shouldn't be outing anyone. One's personal sexuality isn't anybody else's business. Even if one is a bigot.
I think there is a good argument to be made for outing someone closeted who is using their power to oppress LGBT+ people, but there is also a trend of labeling any homophobic politician as being in the closet when a lot of them are just plain old bigots.
I'm sorry, but I must vehemently disagree. There is absolutely no reason to discuss publicly someone's private sexual preferences. Otherwise, you have the society they want where witch-hunts can be started over rumors.
That is also bad, and should not be tolerated.
nah, if you're an elected political official with power over other peoples lives, and you're a bigot, it's open fuckin season, and i'd recommend outting every single last goddamned one of them
Except he wasn't outed as a bigot. He was outed as "not a bigot".
All Republicans are hypocritical bigots, by definition. It's the core of their political party, it's who they signed up to be identified with, it's who they are, or in the case of this poor bigoted fuck, were. I don't want to see any "but this was a nice republican" bullshit. After the Southern Strategy in 1964, all Republicans are trash, every single one.
Institutionalized racism, misogyny, homophobia, and white Christian separatism as party platform. No matter how "conservative" Republicans claimed to be, The Southern Strategy was the core value and singular driving force for the past 60 years. MAGA isn't a symptom, it's result.
Out the ones that could be a part of the ones who could effect change so they can be ousted and replaced by another run-of-the-mill Republican demon. Smart. Real big-brained move.
Mmmmmmmm... No, you know what? fuck that. You don't get to be a bigot and then expect privacy in your own life. Response to even if one is a bigot
Exactly.
This is classic conservative rules for thee bullshit.
You have it exactly backwards though. You don't get to expect privacy in your own life if you refuse to respect the privacy of others.
Also, why would you fight bigotry by demeaning the very thing they oppose with their bigotry? You're only adding fuel to the fire.
Paradox of intolerance. Your argument is invalid.
Imagine outing someone as straight. Essentially it's a weird attempt to enforce a degree of group think
That's the biggest problem with religion and hypocrisy. You're all right being against everything that doesn't concern you personally but as soon as it does suddenly it's a problem.
Because every issue has exactly two sides nowadays. And this guy uses twitter, so he should have noticed that by now.
That quote is ignoring the fact that it was his fellow conservatives who went after him to destroy his life. It is his fellow conservatives -- the ones he chose to stand among and support -- that enjoy this outcome.
You cannot be surprised when bullies bully. And the people who hang out with bullies because it benefits them to do so? They are also bullies.
And unfortunately, I think that's exactly why you're wrong. The issue isn't partisanship. The issue is bigotry. These people outed him because they hate and want to destroy LGBT people. There's no shades of grey here. There is no moderate position. This story happened even with no one from the opposite partisan position being involved.
And he participated in that bullying for years himself.
This guy was those guys. Dressing in drag doesn't give him a pass.
I'm pretty sure there's more than two sides to a lot of things in life dude
Guys, he not only was a Republican, he was a Baptist preacher. He aligned himself with these two LGBTQ hater groups.
Maybe he joined the GOP and the Baptist denomination in an attempt to shield his lifestyle, but he willingly belonged to these two groups which both actively HATE LGBTQ and condemn his very lifestyle.
I have a lot of sympathy for people who feel they must disguise their true selves in order to protect themselves...and I respect that he tried to reach out and offer support to others online.
But I'm hearing some very disturbing 'rumors' that he posted hateful, stalking, character assassination of particular people online. And accusations of child porn.
I'm going to reserve my sympathy for him for now, until the whole truth is known.
I don't know why people on here are grandstanding and white knighting for this douche, when so many people who are hurt by the GOP actually need our sympathy and compassion.
I have zero compassion or emotions for assholes that actively support hate organizations.
I feel like I can do both severely criticize his actions while defending his sexuality. I can also be understanding about his wanting to write erotica or crossdress but not necessarily the way he went about it.
I don't have the patience for hateful bigots but there are aspects of this story that have historically been weaponized against us LGBT+ that need attention.
To me, all of this shows just how insidious the right wing conservative mindset is. It's self destructive as well and societally crippling.
Really sad that he didn’t feel it was ok to be himself and chose to end his life.
I don’t think he killed himself because he wasn’t accepting of himself, but because he was being tormented and ridiculed and had his entire life turned upside down for who he was. Big difference.
Queer man surprised when anti-queer party he's joined deems him a target. More non-news at 11.
I was thinking "Maybe he was more moderate or even liberal, but just knew there's no getting elected without an (R) in small town Alabama politics, and so ran as a Republican anyway." The inverse happens in our town - we're so blue, we occasionally get conservatives running as Democrats just to have a shot.
But then he ran for re-election in 2020 and used publicity of him and Trump together to get re-elected, which is farther than any actual moderate would go. So he's either a massive hypocrite to the LGBT community or a massive hypocrite to the Conservative community, but either way, wasn't super bright if he was posting all this publicly to Reddit as an elected figure. Shame he felt the need to shoot himself. Could have just moved to a blue state.
"But... I worship money, too!"
Leopards…leopards.
But, but, but, I didn't think the leopards were going to eat MY FACE!!!
/shockedpikachuemoji
Daniel walks into the lions den, gets attacked by a leopard
I hate Republicans for all they do and stand for, but nobody kills themselves just for fun. This guy was mentally ill (aside from being in the GOP) and got pushed over the brink by an asshole.
You don't have to be sad about his death, but suicide is not normal and should never be encouraged like some here basically do.
While I agree that suicide should never ever ever be encouraged. I don’t think it’s necessarily a mental illness. This person was going to or already had lost everything they had ever known and worked for. They would have been a pariah in their town. They very likely would have been disowned by family and friends. It’s a little late in life to be starting all over somewhere new. I don’t think it’s crazy to contemplate unconventional exit strategies in that case.
Source: I am from small rural town Alabama.
I also think that we should remove the negative stigma behind suicide. After all, even bringing it up with a mental health professional can and will get you essentially arrested for 48 to 72 hours which discourages people from seeking help.
Also, can we just acknowledge how fucked up it is that this person felt they had no other way to deal with the situation, all because a group of people cared what clothes he wore in private.
I get that he decided to be part of this group, but even still... No one deserves that.
He could have moved to Oregon and a small town would have embraced him. sigh
Where as I agree with you. It’s also funny that you say that. I have some friends that moved from Oregon to Alabama because it’s so cheap to live here.
I don't know.
It seems to me that when objectively bad people take themselves out of the equation then it's a net positive for everyone.
Yeah, for example convicted pedos have a higher suicide rate than the average - I don't think most people believe that is a statistic we should work on changing.
Fascism eats its own
The decade of the well-fed leopards
This guy was posting pictures of kids to porn sites and stalking local women. good riddance tbh. before anyone goes defending him, read the fucking article https://1819news.com/news/item/to-say-i-was-a-stalker-would-be-a-bit-of-an-understatement-curvy-transgender-smiths-station-mayor-copeland-wrote-fiction-about-murdering-real-life-local-businesswoman-assuming-her-identity
Oh. I wouldn't defend a republican if you put a gun to my head. Anyone willing to support them is either brainwashed, stupid, greedy, or some combination of the three
So the man who dressed in women's clothing supported the party that hates men who dress in woman's clothing. Hard to have much empathy.
That guy killed himself because his political career was over, all his work, all his grift, to the trash. So I doubt it was for bullying entirely.
A pastor would have concocted some bullshit about being possessed by the devil, and sell hard the repentant image.
Well, that was wrong. /s
Seriously, though… it's almost as though being a member of a hate-group (conservatism) results in terrible outcomes when you're on the outs with said group.
That's horrible, poor dude should just have lived his truth. Damn same he felt that this was the only way forward/out.
Guess who just had their face eaten by leopards!
b-but i didn't think they would eat my face! I thought they would eat everyone elses face!
These fucks (his church) will use this as ammo for their anti-LGBTQ cause. "See folks, this is what happens when you dance with the devil." despite them and people like them being the actual reason that led to this man killing himself. Shameful. We're not going to advance as a species/society until we let go of religion. It's not important anymore, it's a fake fairytale much like Santa Claus or the Easter bunny, and people need to accept that there isn't some man in the sky judging you.
I don't personally approve of some of the stuff this fellow did, and most of it is just disagreeable or not my cup of tea. But it sure isn't worth the man's life. What a shame he ended up killing himself.
He should be out, loud and proud. This comes from deep seeded bigotry
This is really fucking sad. A man who should have been able to express his true self but couldn't because of the twisted shackles of religion that led to his own death. Fuck religion.
The guy's "true self" was posting pictures of literal children calling them whores and sluts and writing stories about the children being given forced gender changes to be sold into sex slavery.
Yes religion twisted him into what he became. I’m not condoning the guys actions, just sad that he ended up where he did because of religions influence. Who knows how he would've ended up if he didn’t have all that fucked up shit twisting him. May have still turned out to be a piece of shit
Religion and old beliefs are the destroyer of mankind.
We don't need the threat of eternal hell to be good.
Religion teaches that we are inherently evil and need a God to be good.
All Republicans are hypocritical bigots, by definition. It's the core of their political party, it's who they signed up to be identified with, it's who they are, or in the case of this poor bigoted fuck, were. I don't want to see any "but this was a nice republican" bullshit. After the Southern Strategy in 1964, all Republicans are trash, every single one.
Institutionalized racism, misogyny, homophobia, and white Christian separatism as party platform. No matter how "conservative" Republicans claimed to be, The Southern Strategy was the core value and singular driving force for the past 60 years. MAGA isn't a symptom, it's result.
They're not all hypocritical biggots. Some of them are just plain stupid.
Or brainwashed. This was a boomer who grew up in very rural Alabama. There was almost no chance he wasn't going to grow up to be a Republican. And from what I've read, from all accounts, he was not a bigot and was supportive of trans people.
This is a terrible shame and I hope the people who needlessly outed and ridiculed him feel the guilt on their consciences.
There are plenty of Democratic voters in Alabama. Even in rural Alabama. The 2020 presidential election, for example, has a map that breaks down voting by county. Look at all the pink and light red regions - those went Republican, sure, but only by tens of percentage points.
This guy didn't have to be Republican.
I'm not a republican but almost every other member of my family is Republican.
The grand majority of them could care less about whether a person is gay or not, or what they do in their own time or in the privacy of their own homes.
I am a minister and I performed a gay wedding for my brother-in-law's brother and his husband just a month ago.
Every single one of them vote Republican because they believe that voting Republican will either decrease their tax burden, that it will prevent abortions, that it will keep illegal immigrants out of the country, or that it will help prevent the world from going even more insane than it already is.
That's why they vote republican.
The fact that the Republican party is anti-trans and anti women's rights and pro white rights at the cost of the right of every other race and anti-environment and pro-billionaire simply cannot penetrate into their brains and so they do not consider those topics.
You cannot bring up those topics to them, because they do not have the mental or emotional faculties to communicate about them.
ignorance and stupidity is no excuse to vote for bigotry, it may be the reason, but it's no excuse at all
I don't know who you think is excusing their stupidity and ignorance. Certainly not me. I was just pointing out that not all GOPers are evil assholes, some of them are just idiots
Pro-life crowd bullying other people into suicide is very funny indeed
Sad. But maybe now he’ll have peace.
You don't have anything when you're dead.
GOP exposed.
Guess he didn't really believe in his religion since suicide is a big no no.
He was Baptist not Catholic. Keep your sects straight.
The church believes that because life is created by God, it is sacred from conception until natural death and that suicide is self-murder, says C. Ben Mitchell, a professor of moral philosophy at SBC-affiliated Union University in Jackson, Tenn.
It's hard to keep track. Can you give me a list?
The only thing they actually care about is how they're perceived by the rest of the cult.
Guilt is powerful
Imagine taking your own life over this shit because your devotion to right wing identity politics supercedes your self-determination.
I think it's more just embarrassing to most people
This is a tragedy that should never have happened.
I'm in rural Georgia. If you want to hold any political office at all, you have to be Republican. That's just the way it is. There's a Democratic party, and they run candidates in most elections, but they're doing pretty good when they get more votes than the Libertarian candidates do. So if you want to change shit or do any good at all, you run as a Republican, and you vote in Republican primaries. At a local level, there are definitely people that are trying to do good things that are Republicans, even though they agree with most or all points of the Democratic party.
I haven't seen any indication that this person--and I don't know how they privately self-identified--was anti-LGBTQ+, aside from their association with the Republican party.
When you're in a small town in the south, esp. when you're involved in small town politics in the south, this kind of thing is a social death sentence. It would likely mean the loss of both of their jobs, and possibly their family.
They didn't deserve this.
No one deserves this.
The people celebrating their suicide, because they were religious and in local politics as a Republican, should be ashamed of themselves. Trans lives matter, but only as long as they fit in the molds we've made for 'em, huh?
My heart goes out to their family.
and evil wins again
How weird to see where I went to school on the news in this way and yet rather unsurprising given the culture in the area.
Same.
Most comments here are horribly bigoted and disgusting honestly
It's a really weird situation. .. Here we have a conservative who is writing the kind crime novel that conservatives tend to write about trans people that utilizes a bunch of fairly stereotypical transphobic narratives that internally within the trans community would elicit disgust and ridicule and then appearing to act it out.
While it's possible they could have been trans themselves this feels a lot more like someone treating the conservative stereotype of trans people as a kink and acting on it. JK Rowling writes this kind of shlock the key difference being she, at least as far as we know, didn't write it as part of some sort of LARP. This person was in a complicated situation, even if they weren't trans they were caught doing things the right would look at as definitive evidence as trans and they likely had trans or trans ally commenters telling them that what they were doing was not okay. So you either have a trans hypocrite willing to set their own community on fire because of their subscription to conservative values and tropes or you have a rather stupid conservative secretly treating a trans psychokiller trope as their personal fetish or trying to use it to add realism to fuel their hobby of writing transphobic fiction and got caught by a community that is both extremely transphobic and equally not empathetic to it just being a kink.
For those who are claiming cognitive dissonance in the audience there are a few things at play.
Suicide is a tragedy. Many of us know what the impacts of that are on communities and loved ones. This person did some bad shit but not the sort of thing we would execute someone for doing. This is still a tragedy.
In a conservative run world being closeted and driven to suicide is a thing that has happened to generations of trans people who were not this person. It is okay to register that is not something we want to keep or return to. Feeling some empathy for trans people caught in this situation is normal.
We don't really know what this person's actual situation is but in absence of context they effectively died becoming the sort of bogeyman the right loves to spread. They effectively died making the trope seem more real which isn't great for the trans community particularly regardless of this person's potential transness.
Stalking isn't fucking cool. Neither is writing this kind of shit.
However you want to feel about this on the spectrum of "fuck this person in particular" to "that poor person, this shouldn't have happened" this all is valid. But it isn't hypocrisy, it's nuance and the right does not fucking understand nuance.
Hmmm I'm disappointed. If you say he's Bubba from Alabama, that's not the picture I'm expecting
I dunno, not to make light of the guy, but throw on a John Deere cap and a bushy goatee and I can see it.
Man I love it when Republicans eat their own.
Conservative paper outs conservative hypocrite and instead of admitting the truth he shoots himself.
Conservatives are all cowards at their core from what I've seen.
Also this pile of bs fta is rich AF:
even though it does not appear he had taken any public positions against LGBTQ issues that could be construed as hypocritical.
He's a Republican. Their entire party attacks LGBTQ people but this guy is supposed to get a pass?
Fuck him. Fuck conservatives who think this is ok for them to do but they can demonize anyone else who wants to dress up.
Some rather tribal thinking there
Take that publication to court. Someone should pay for this loss of life
Why? What law prevents you from exposing information someone themselves made public?
Don't forget the mayor was a republican. Free media is more important than republicans saving face.
He might've been a republican, but no one deserves to be bullied to suicide.
EDIT: After reading the comments I tend to agree with some of the people. The guy was a republican, part of a party spewing constant hate. The journalists just pointed out his hypocrisy (although indirectly and taht wasn't the main point of their article). I just find it rather tragic that a man decides to spew hate unto others just because he can't accept himself to do the things he wants, and when he's confronted with that, under pressure he commits suicide. It's rather.. sad. I'm part of the LGBTQ community and still feel a bit sad about all of this even though the guy probably voted against my people..
Eh, I think it was okay for Hitler.
Good point. But I hardly see Hitler as human
Exposing hypocrisy of public officials is the duty of journalists. As a representative of his constituents, he holds the responsibility to practice what he preaches and if he can talk the talk then he should walk the walk.
This isn't bullying. He killed himself because he has severe mental issues and he can't stand to face the truth about himsellf.
The truth is he represents a political party that routinely preaches hate about people like himself, a party that votes to make it illegal to host drag shows, a party that thinks that gay people should have less rights than straight people.
He killed himself because he couldn't tolerate being exposed.
If journalists don't expose our politicians for when they are lying, cheating, stealing, or being corrupt, then the journalists aren't doing their job.
He killed himself because he knows how badly people like him are treated, because he serves and supports the people who do it. The thought of being on the other end of that interaction was immediately too much to tolerate. If he was bullied into suicide, he was the one doing the bullying.
Even Stalin, Hitler, or other filthy people?
Alright.. I'll take that back..
But he wasn't? Releasing news of you being a hypocrite isn't bullying. It's the other Republicans fault he wasn't comfortable coming out.