Opinion | Smiths Station mayor's suicide should serve as a lesson for all of us
Hairyblue@kbin.social to 
alreporter.com
We have fostered an environment in which a man who has apparently committed no crimes nor harmed anyone is shamed into ending his life.
"We have fostered"?
Not we, Republicans, including Copeland. Dude was a coward and hypocrite. He may have been many other things including loving husband and father.
You cannot work for a colation of people who make queer people feel safer being in the closet and then get all shocked when your coalition outs you.
I don't think he should have been outed for being queer. I think he should have been outed for being queer, while most hypocritically supporting anti-queer policy and rhetoric. Dude didn't need to go into politics. Didnt need to be a Republican.
Okay this author can fuck right off with this 'we' garbage. Republicans did this. If you're too chicken shit to be specific with your pontificating then you're just a worthless pearl clutching asshole.
Edit: lol at these morons assuming I must be unaware that ALreporter is an Alabama news source and that it somehow should serve to invalidate anything I've said. This editorial is garbage. It's not the fault of Alabamians, it's the fault of Alabama Republicans and by extension the national party. Anything short of assigning blame where it belongs, squarely at the feet of the Republican party, is a blatant lie and a transparent attempt to spread blame onto those who bear no responsibility for this tragedy whatsoever.
If you scroll just below the article you'll see the following about the author: "Josh Moon is an investigative reporter and featured columnist at the Alabama Political Reporter with years of political reporting experience in Alabama." That tells me the 'we' is his Alabama audience.
It’s an Alabama focused news site. The we can apply to either Alabamans, media outlets, or both. So that’s the we, and likely one you’re not a part of.
If you are in that we, it sucks, but if you’re going to be part of a whole with your neighbors, you’re going to have to own the consequences of their ideas sometimes. Maintaining a separation from them might make you feel morally superior, but it’s not going to do anything to negate those consequences or prevent future ones.
Separating is a powerful act, but it should be a rare one.
Wow, this article sucks. Trying reeeal hard to blame people for investigating, and not for being bigots in the first place. Also conveniently ignoring this guy's public stance on those same bigots.
I didn’t read it that way. The op ed spends most of the text criticizing christian, anti-LGBTQ legislation. He blames the bigots.
There’s a lot more in the article, but I don’t want to quote too much and run afoul of site rules.
I thought i read that he didn't really have a public stance other than just an "R".
Why not pick D and be welcomed? Why side with the people who clearly hate him enough to pressure him to die.
Because Alabama isn't going to elect a Democrat.
It's an opinion piece, not a news article. They're usually something like this.
Fuck outta here. The republicunts own this.
The lesson should be that these Christian nationalists are coming for everyone. You don't get a pass for being a "good one" if you deviate from their standards.
Their sexual standards are everything except sex between married couples for procreation is wrong. The sodomy laws included making oral sex between heterosexually married couples illegal. They aren't just coming for trans people they are coming for them first. The rest of us are coming next.
If you need a "lesson" to not call real children sluts or whores and write stories about those children being given forced gender surgery and sold into sex slavery on public accounts with your face attached, you should probably kill yourself too
lol, nope, Republicans fuck off, we're intolerant to intolerance in this household
Poor poor racist Republican, joined the Republican party to hold down women, and minorities, didn't wanna get into the whole "the leopards that eat faces party, that i glad fully joined and represented. might eat my face, should they find out i like wearing women's clothing, here, let me just defund another domestic violence shelter, nope, i'll be just fine"
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.
Agree with the thoughts on Republican party in generally. But let's be sure that it's morally wrong to out people, even if they have betrayed the social contract on tolerance.
That means you don't tolerate people's intolerance. It doesn't mean you go scorched earth and use their own hateful tactics against them.
In this case, it was his own party and/or "side" that outed him. But it was still wrong regardless of who did it and no one should encourage that.
I'm pretty done with the suggestion of suicide across the board.
Fucking stay with us; witness this shit; and help us fix this mess.
All of us?.
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