Fear and hate won out — for now — in the town of College Station, where Pride organizers decided to cancel an annual picnic. The event was forecast to draw a couple hundred people in the sleepy little sprawl, but someone decided that it would be a good idea to threaten violence and so leaders called it off rather than risk another Texas shooting.
(It’s not an idle or hypothetical threat; there was a mass shooting in Houston on July 4, and three separate mass shootings in Texas last week. Five people were killed, fourteen were injured.)
Among the threats: a Tumblr post that said “Get some guns it’s time to get on the news,” alongside an image of a flyer for the picnic. Vigilant organizers say that they’ve made an FBI complaint, and the local police issued a subpoena to Tumblr. Tumblr responded immediately by … hahaha, just kidding, Tumblr (and its owner, Yahoo) have not responded at all. Guess it just didn’t seem that important to them.
With no information forthcoming from Tumblr and Yahoo, organizers decided that it would be best just to encourage people to stay home and have some private Pride instead. They’ve said that they’ll hopefully reschedule, but they don’t know when that might happen.
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In the mean time, Texas officials continue to fight against laws that would protect LGBT citizens from discrimination, in effect legitimizing their marginalization and the threats of violence. We’re all familiar with the slogan “don’t mess with Texas,” but frankly the state seems like a total mess as it is.
joeyty
Texas really isn’t a mess though, compared to other states. It’s not even in the top ten states for worst crime nor worst hate crimes (and that’s going by per capita).
Xzamilio
Have you seen the comment section of a Yahoo article? It is Troll Mecca… good luck with them responding to that
SFHandyman
College Station isn’t sleepy at all. That is where Texas A&M University is located.
gayhope1990
@Xzamilio:So I’m sure our troll Brian has a yahoo account.
DCguy
@joeyty:
What have I been saying on the other postings. ANY time the Log CAbin GOP comes onto a posting about anything anti-gay that has been done by the GOP or in a REd state etc.. the first thing they do is try to change the topic.
In other words, they are desperate to get people to ignore anything anti-lgbt that happens.
So Texas isn’t bad? Among the highest uninsured in the nation, among the highest partially employed, two cities ranked in the list of worst crime, and…oh yeah, Pride celebrations need to be cancelled because of threats of attack.
Yeah, it’s great there.
MediaGuy
Nah, one threat on Tumblr isn’t gonna shut down a Pride event. What’s the rest of the story?
joeyty
@DCguy: Texas doesn’t even make the top ten states as far as crime goes. And doesn’t make the top ten states as far as Hate Crime goes. (And I’ve never been there, but a bud of mine moved there and loves both the Dallas art and gay scene. Hates the summer heat though).
Hermes
@MediaGuy: I would hope you are kidding. – responsible groups do try to protect their members. A threat calling people to get guns and kill people – which is what that amounted to – when mass killings have occurred recently… yeah, that’s enough all by itself if government can’t act fast enough.
MediaGuy
@Hermes:There are threats to everything all the time, if there was just one tumbler threat and the organizers screamed like marys and cancelled all the events, then there’s a real problem with this. The gay community isn’t going to just run because of one threat. If they did, shame on them, where’s your gay pride gentlemen? Sometimes you have to fight for custody of your pride. There’s more to this than just one random threat on tumblr. What it it?