I fully agree with your comment. That said:

Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones said that deputies who tried to pull Copeland over for a welfare check witnessed Copeland step out of his car and shoot himself.

Why are we taking the word of the cops for what happened? We know the right-wingers don’t distinguish between cross-dressers and pedophiles. We know that some of them find great satisfaction in abusing, torturing and even killing those that they consider “other”. And we know that cops cover for other cops.

Yes, it’s entirely possible and plausible that this guy killed himself, but why are we just blindly accepting the cops’ version of events here?

Conservatism Kills.

Literally. Abortion bans increase maternal deaths, and a report by the ADL found that right-wing extremists are responsible for 75% of politically motivated deaths, compared to only 4% by left-wingers.

A review of the research on the ideological basis of political violence explains why conservatism is more deadly:

Whereas most terrorist attacks result in zero fatalities, casualties associated with attacks vary across instances. It is thus possible to examine whether followers of certain ideologies are more likely to use fatal violence, relative to, for instance, property or infrastructure crimes that do not cause deaths. Ideologies that more capably address individuals’ needs should be more ‘successful’ at causing fatalities. Past research specifically suggests two candidate ideologies that are likely to be effective: ideologies on the political right (versus left) and religious (versus secular) ideologies. Analyses of terrorist attacks committed between 1998 and 2005 revealed that organizations subscribing to religious ideologies were the most likely to engage in lethal attacks and were responsible for a greater number of deaths. ‘Leftist’ groups were significantly less likely to kill than religious groups, and anarchist groups were the least likely to engage in lethal attacks. Eco-terrorists were responsible for zero lethal attacks during this period, so they were excluded from analyses. Religious ideology has also been found to increase the lethality of suicide attacks, whereas attacks perpetrated in US regions known for propagating a ‘culture of honor’ were more deadly than attacks perpetrated in other regions.

Why might this be the case? Conservatives are more likely to see the world in absolutist, dogmatic, and closure affording ways than are liberals. Conservatives are also more likely than liberals to moralize values that effectively promote violence. Conservatives value loyalty, authority, and sanctity. This is important, as research has further found that the sacralization of loyalty was positively related (whereas the sacralization of other values was either unrelated or negatively related) to the justification of violence. This suggests that conservative ideologies should have an easier time moralizing political violence than liberal ideologies.

Religious ideologies are similarly suited to addressing the previously outlined needs. Religious ideologies can provide greater certainty than secular ideologies because they rest on the authority of God. In addition, through the promise of a blessed afterlife to those who act as prescribed by the ideology, religion offers a potent avenue to significance that is unavailable to secular ideologies. Religion can more naturally moralize political values, as interpretations of Holy Scripture can convincingly link violent means to religious values and provide convincing rationale for acting on behalf of those injunctions. Furthermore, because religious ideologies cannot be directly verified, people are more reliant on social validation to demonstrate the correctness of their beliefs. Consequently, religious individuals tend to be collectivistic and are more prone to derogate and act with hostility toward adherents of other ideologies. Finally, religious fundamentalism—the form that religious ideology is likely to take among extremists—is positively related to the need for cognitive closure that foments group-centrism, and this relationship partially explains the derogation of outgroup members.

This is really sad. An alternative life for this guy is dressing the way he wants as appropriate to his activities that day and the only remarks are to compliment his outfit here and there. What a sad world those people have made for themselves.

We need a RemindMe bot for things like what you’re doing.

I wouldn’t feel as bad if he was a raging bigot about lgbtq issues, but apparently he didn’t have much to say about that which is pretty impressive for a BAPTIST PREACHER IN ALABAMA.

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 joined 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

Crossdressing isn’t transexuality by itself.

Also religious in the deep south AND a pastor. He must’ve been seeing Green-Goblin hallucinations but with Kenneth Copeland instead of Willem Dafoe.

If you read the original article (the one that prompted his suicide), the guy explicitly said that he didn’t feel female. He was just a crossdresser.

The problem with people is that some are idiots. Regardless of what group you’re in you’ve got some really stupid assholes. Or as their fellow republicans will see them: useful idiots

Phew. I was hoping he was a GOP member. Glad this story had a happy ending.

maybe they can listen to his modern day apostle Fred Rogers when he said “I like you just the way you are.”

Right. That would be Presbyterian minister, children’s show host, gave-out-full-size-candy-bars-at-Halloween Fred Rogers, yes? The one that Fox went out of their way to describe as “an evil, evil man” who was [in effect] responsible for corrupting today’s youth? Well, sadly, I think I can explain why they don’t listen to Mr. Rogers …

They do listen to Jesus. Not the Middle-Eastern Jewish Socialist Jesus. They listen to white racist Conservative American Jesus, they listen to Supply Side Jesus, they listen to the Jesus who can fit a rich man through the eye of a needle and who’s death gives them the right to sin.

As a reminder, this is what they had to say about Mr. Rogers.

No, but their Instagram is open to comments and is receiving them.

I checked the bird site so you don’t have to: yes the inciting article is being shared by people on both sides. The comments are almost solely defending his suicide and the hatred that sparked it.

Welp, conservatives fucking suck.

It’s even worse than that. No one knows the story at all but they all have a fully developed opinion from reading the headline.

Maybe some of the locals whose children he posted to pornographic websites won’t miss him.

Maybe the local businesswoman he obsessed over while he wrote stories about killing her, seducing her husband, and stealing her life won’t miss him.

It is scary how easy it is to get people to rally over things they know nothing about. I’m not holier than thou either. I’ve caught myself reacting before thinking.

Edit: I want to make it clear that I wish this person had got help. I definitely feel empathy for this person, I just don’t think that the cross dressing is the primary issue here. This person was public figure posting deranged and terrible things online using real people from his town as objects of fantasy.

Live in a progressive city any you can be Bubba the trans mayor on the ballot.

But doctor, I am Pagliacci…