*A Southern California business owner was shot and killed Friday by a man who objected to an LGBTQ+ Pride flag displayed at her clothing store, officials said.
San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies responded to the Mag.Pi clothing store in Cedar Glen, Calif., at around 5 p.m. local time for reports of a shooting.
Deputies discovered the victim, 66-year-old Laura Ann Carleton, suffering from a gunshot wound. Carleton was pronounced dead at the scene, the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department said in a news release.
The suspect, who was not identified by officials, fled the scene on foot.
According to deputies, the man made “several disparaging remarks about a rainbow flag” that stood outside Carleton’s store before ultimately shooting her.*
This is terrorism.
Indeed, very much so.
But wait, I’ve heard “there are good people on both sides” [some infamous criminal].
This is the output of authoritarian rhetoric.
Their first step was making sure their volunteer soldiers could self arm.
Plausible deniability up the whole chain.
This is going to get so much worse.
The culture war is a hot war.
cf Martin Niemöller . . .
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=3lZTUD4nwsg
She left behind a husband and 9 children.
What a homophobic monster.
Right wing terrorism in action.
It’s shitty that the guilty party chose death by cop rather than face trial. It would be good to get these fuckers on court TV with all their dirty laundry to boot.
Pull the religion into it, he’s a Christian terrorist.
A Zealot of Christ.
I can’t believe how unwilling people are to admit that ------ianity is complicit in all these crimes.
Obviously, this is what Jesus wanted. “I come to bring a sword” and all that.
You’d think that decent people would realize that it’s time to set the hateful fairy tales aside and actually do the work of being decent humans, but no.
Not Christian and not defending organized religion in any way, but most of the stuff Jesus supposedly said was peaceful and about accepting people no matter who they are. It was just twisted over the years to be something other than that. The believable stuff about Jesus makes me assume he would be accepting (maybe not like it, but accepting of it) of LGBTQ+ people. Old testament shit is a whole other thing though.
most of the stuff Jesus supposedly said was peaceful and about accepting people no matter who they are.
This is a recent reinterpretation of Jesus.
He had plenty to say about who he was going to punish, the extent and type of pain he was going to inflict, etc.
Traditionally, it was Mary who was the softie.
Do you have sources? Because the canonical New Testament says otherwise. If anything, violent Jesus is the new thing.
I think a lot of Christians misunderstand hell and damnation, probably because of the imagery used in the Bible. The important thing to take away is that it’s a state of guilt and regret (i.e. internal torment), not one of active punishment (external torment). But then we have depictions, such as Dante’s Divine Comedy, where there are devils and fire and whips and whatnot going on to actively torture and punish sinners.
But that’s not the real problem, the problem is religious leaders stirring people up and preying on their fear to encourage devotion.
So I don’t think it’s the fault of religions themselves, but the various leaders that rile people up. Just like I rarely blame political ideologies, but instead the leaders that twist them for their own purposes. There are certainly genuinely evil ideologies and perhaps religions, but the problem is with how people use them, not the ideologies themselves. For example, Buddhism is widely recognized as being a peaceful religion, yet it has been used to justify violence despite violence being expressly against its tenets.
So my contention isn’t with religion or any given ideology (with a few exceptions), it’s worth extremists.
There is a difference between judging people in life and them being judged in death.
Matthew 7:1-3
7 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.
3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
According to Jesus, we’ll all be judged, but it is to be done by God, not by us. If we deserve salvation, fine. If we deserve damnation, OK. However, people living on earth should not be putting their judgements on others.
have you noticed is always the same side trying to kill the other?
What the actual fuck. We’re entering the second dark ages
tHeY jUsT hAvE dIFFeReNt oPiN8OnS tHaN yOu
bOtH sIDeS aRe tHe Same!! 1!!
I find it important to make clear it was a hate crime, but Lauri Carleton was NOT killed “over a rainbow flag outside her clothing store”.
No one gets killed because of a rainbow flag. You get killed because an asshole who wants to rather die than adapt to the world changing wants to spread fear with his last action and needs desperately to find a “reason”. Let’s not pretend he had a reason any other than being a coward.
My heart goes out to her family, friends and the community impacted.
We used to have a progress flag on our car but took it off months ago due to fears of something like this happening. How senseless and tagic… may she rest in peace.
That’ll teach her for supporting a minority group.
Edit: might have to put an /s at this point….
Sorry, sarcasm is dead
Massive respect and sorrow for the loss of an actual ally.
And fuck that guy and the religion, media, and politicians that made him.
Sic semper bigotis.
I am religious and I believe in life after death. I also believe this dude will suffer for quite some time for this show of intolerance. Every major religion I’m familiar with views murder as unforgivable, and that’s precisely what this was, murder of an innocent.
I sincerely hope this person gets what they deserve in the next life.
I have nothing but love for the LGBTQ+ community. I hope the pride flags out there give you some sense of reassurance that the majority is on your side. Screw that guy, and screw anyone that thinks violence is an option to dealing with these types of disagreements. i sincerely hope this convinces others to rethink their own intolerant views.
Every major religion I’m familiar with views murder as unforgivable
Many many religions also view homosexuality as a sin, so depending on what you believe you may be walking a very fine line of hypocrisy here
I don’t see any reason for hypocrisy. Most religions don’t condone violence against sinners, instead leaving that to God to handle. They instead encourage peaceful proselytizing to convince sinners to repent.
So whether homosexuality is a sin is irrelevant, violence isn’t acceptable. You may believe a gay couple deserves an eternity in hell, but that doesn’t justify murder.
People have absolutely used religion as an excuse, but they need to do a lot of mental gymnastics to justify it with the tenets of the religion. And if you’re willing to do that, you don’t need religion at that point, it’s just good old fashioned intolerance. If it’s not religion, maybe it’s a philosophy or political ideology.
Are you Christian? If so you may want to review Leviticus, which literally calls for violence and death against homosexuals. If you are a Christian but you’re being picky and choosy with scripture, then you are a hypocrite.
Leviticus 20:13 If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
Edit: I went out on a limb and quoted Christian scripture because you capitalized the word god. If you aren’t Christian I can try to provide scripture for whatever religion you believe in
Yes, I am Christian.
If you’ll note, Leviticus is from the Law of Moses, which Jesus came to fulfill, meaning it’s no longer applicable. And the rules only ever applied to the House of Israel, there was no command or even suggestion to go out and apply it outside of the people of God.
Just a few verses before that discusses putting adulterers to death, yet we read in John 8:1-11 how Jesus handled an adultress. He did not condemn her to death (which was the law from Leviticus) and instead forgave her with the admonition to sin no more.
If we look in the New Testament, we see a similar proscription against homosexuality, such as in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10:
9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
The language is softened. Instead of being killed, now they’re merely damned in the next life (still not great, but I’ll get to that later). It is still considered a sin, it just no longer carries the temporal penalty of death.
My personal position is to do as Jesus said, to leave to Caesar that which is Caesar’s (Matthew 22:20-22; I interpret this as separation of church and state), and also the example of the Old Testament to not apply the laws of the people of God to the people not of God (hinted at in the beginning of the chapter you quoted). I believe governments should not make any laws to exclude people based on something like sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. I also believe that God knows people much better than I ever can, so it is not my place to judge anyone’s choice of lifestyle (Matthew 7:1-5). Jesus also commanded his followers to love everyone, especially our enemies (Luke 6:27-28), so it’s not my place to exclude someone based on whether I think they’re sinning. In fact, Jesus went out of his way to help sinners, so should I.
To me, Christianity is nothing but a message of love, and hell is merely the intense guilt from rejecting the love of God. It’s like that feeling you get when you hurt someone you love deeply, only exacerbated by the finality of not having any mortal time left to truly repent. I personally don’t believe “eternal” means forever in this context because I believe God has infinite mercy, that’s speculation on my part.
So in short, I absolutely love people who I believe are sinning, and I will fight for LGBTQ+ rights because that’s just and fair for a society to support. It’s not my place to enforce my value system on anyone, it’s only my place to love others with as pure of a love as I can manage.
I don’t really have much to say to most of this but what I will say is that I’ve never once thought of or seen Christianity as a message of love, certainly not from the followers that I’ve met. But that gets into anecdotal territory and how could I possibly know how the average Christian would act towards someone like me. To be honest I do my best to avoid them. But I do appreciate you explaining your point of view, I’ll take back what I said about you being a hypocrite because clearly you have a much better grasp on your personal theology than I do.
Your larger point stands, that Christianity is often used as a weapon of sorts. The same goes for most religions, ideologies, and philosophies, even Buddhism is used to justify violence.
However, most religions themselves are generally peaceful. I’m convinced that Islam is peaceful, despite it being used to justify terrible acts of terrorism, gruesome punishments for deviance, etc. The same goes for communism and capitalism, which have both been used to justify violence (though I have a harder time with facism, it’s just built on hate imo).
The enemy here isn’t religion, but extremism. Even if we eradicate religion, we’ll still have the propensity for extremism. The same people that use religion to justify violence would simply use something else instead. Most people don’t fully understand their religion, ideology, or philosophy, and they don’t seem to care, provided they get the results they want.
I hope that makes sense.
Not op but what about islam?
The Hadith has multiple passages that condemn homosexuality and call for violence against it:
Sunan Abi Dawud 4462-4463 If you find anyone doing as Lot’s people did, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done. If a man who is not married is seized committing sodomy, he will be stoned to death
Historically Islam has actually been more accepting of LGBT people than Christianity, but in recent history many Islamic countries have sadly flipped the script.
Ooo i see, thank you, didn’t know about this
May Laura Ann Carleton rest in peace. She risked her life to support the LGBT community. Her death should not be in vain. Every motherfucker going on about grooming or drag queens or pro-LGBT indoctrination has blood on their hands. Whoever killed her needs to understand the consequences of what they did.
I don’t think she really risked her life for it. Nobody puts up a rainbow flag expecting to become a martyr.
What happened is that a crazy person used a flag as an excuse to focus their anger onto someone who had nothing to do with whatever the source of that anger was. It could have been a Joe Biden campaign sign or a marijuana poster that set them off. It just so happens that this time it was a rainbow flag.
I guess my point is that putting up a flag isn’t “risking your life,” it’s just a flag. I see absolutely no reason for Ms. Carleton to have even considered that putting up that flag was a risk. She was an innocent victim of a crazy-person, and that’s more terrifying to me than thinking that putting up a flag was risky behavior.
Every time I see another story like this, I get tempted to buy a stack of rainbow bumper stickers to sneakily put them on certain vehicles.
You, of course, mean right over MAGA stickers.
Where else?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A Southern California business owner was shot and killed Friday by a man who objected to an LGBTQ+ Pride flag displayed at her clothing store, officials said.
San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies responded to the Mag.Pi clothing store in Cedar Glen, Calif., at around 5 p.m. local time for reports of a shooting.
According to deputies, the man made “several disparaging remarks about a rainbow flag” that stood outside Carleton’s store before ultimately shooting her.
Carleton studied at the Art Center School of Design and had a long career in the fashion industry, including a 15-year run as an executive at Kenneth Cole, the site said.
The Lake Arrowhead LGBTQ organization took to social media to address the shooting, saying that while Carleton did not identify as a member, she spent her time helping and being an advocate for those in the LGBTQ+ community.
Mountain Provisions Cooperative, a local food co-op, said on Instagram that Carleton and her husband had been pivotal in helping organize a free store after a blizzard hit the area earlier this year.
The original article contains 352 words, the summary contains 177 words. Saved 50%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The suspect, who was not identified by officials,
fledwas allowed to flee the scene on foot.Fixed that for 'em.
That’s a fucking hate crime. It’s too bad he had to kill an innocent person before he did the world a favor and died.
