An Alabama preacher and politician killed himself Friday two days after being outed for having a secret life he shared online as a “transgender curvy girl.”
There’s probably gonna be a lot of trolls in here, but I have to say this is incredibly sad. I do hope his sermons preached love and acceptance rather than the hate that caused him to take his life.
The guy supported the party that routinely shits on minority groups…but when they turn in him it’s sad? He fed the rapid dog that turned and bit him.
Yes, I find it sad when someone is driven to suicide. It’s weird, I know.
I feel that a man who dresses up as a woman in their free time did not decide for himself that gay/trans people are evil. This man probably had been lying to himself and others about who he was for decades, living through self-hate and trying to convince himself that he was “normal” and not “one of those fags” and the like.
Now that he’s accepted himself and thought that he was safe to express who he was in private online communities (obviously stupid for someone in his position), his whole world is coming down on him. Now everyone knows he’s “one of them”.
I don’t know enough about the guy to comment with certainty on what harm he may have caused as mayor, if he actively made life harder for gay/ trans people then that’s really shitty of him. All I’m saying is, things don’t happen in a vacuum, and this guy is just as much a victim of hate and bigotry as anyone else who’s killed themselves over it.
Yeah exactly. Some folks pass the point of sympathy. Folks like Joseph McCarthy, people who run conversion camps, Milo Yannanopolos, Blaire White, etc. But it’s hard to hit that point. I generally draw that line after having accepted yourself or begun living as yourself. And even then, I don’t want these people dead, I want them to change and work to undo the harm they’ve done.
Targeted outing is an important tactic. It’s a way to force the people in power to own up to their hypocrisy and to stop people from hiding their true self behind hate. That’s not what this is, this is outing someone to cause them harm and to scare others. It’s an old harassment technique that’s been done as long as the internet has been around to try to hurt trans people, and it’s not ok.
Explained it the best. I hate what he did. I hate what a lot of people do. But I’m always sad to lose someone who had a chance to change.
It’s what the internet is worst at, forgiving. This person said awful things and did awful things, but if he hadn’t taken his life and had instead worked through this, I honestly believe that he would be someone alive and worth forgiving.
This doesn’t ever excuse the damage people do. I think that’s what people forget. You can forgive people without excusing their harm. But it’s always important that those who seek forgiveness both receive it AND receive it as they work to undo the harm if possible. Sometimes that won’t be possible.
Exactly. The harm is done regardless. I want us to be the side of “I changed for the better”. We shouldn’t immediately trust people or forgive them of course, that “unconditional forgiveness and trust so long as you repent and are on our side” bullshit is part of how Christians keep winding up with a bunch of pedos. But I do believe in restorative justice. Sometimes people become good after doing many bad things.
I want people to be better, so I think we need to stop punishing them for trying to be better. I’ll take former republicans, I’ll take reformed bigots, I’ll take assholes trying to be better, so long as all of them are actually striving to improve. And sometimes those people need to not be in a room so people can get a break from their not being quite there yet or because of the harm they did in the past, but that’s ok, the goal is to get them there.
He supported a party of hate and bigotry but let’s all feel bad when that same hate and bigotry are directed at him.
It’s amazing how many of you are only capable of seeing the world in black and white.
This isn’t a a gotcha: Are you gay or trans? Have you lived in a deeply red, effectively theocratic area of the American south or west?
No, and no
It’s easy for me to judge living in anonymity in a progressive city with a supporting network around me (I’m trans).
More likely she was raised conservative, built a career and family around it, in a small southern town where maintaining that facade is the only way to be accepted, then realized “oh shit I’m trans” and panicked.
At that point, I can totally understand how difficult it would be to escape decades of baggage. Many trans ppl are reluctant to come out for precisely those reasons: career, family, lack of acceptance. The result is turmoil.
I view her more as a lost trans sibling who was born into a cruel world and should be mourned, while not excusing her poor choices of political affiliation. I’m sure it was a daily struggle trying to reconcile what conservatives were saying about people like her, with her own identity.
Not everyone is strong enough to fight this fight.
She supported a party that hates trans people. Nobody could have seen this coming. 🙄
Seriously. He wouldn’t have killed himself if he was surrounded by accepting people.
It’s still tragic that someone felt they couldn’t be themself, but when you spend your time empowering intolerance and then find yourself a target of that intolerance? I have no tears to spare.
Yeah it’s so sad that some giga pervert killed himself after being exposed for writing erotic fanfiction about him murdering and taking over the life of a local business woman and posting his transition fetish memes using real children.
She could’ve had the life she deserved, she could’ve still been the preacher, the politician, the parent, the anything. But for shame and fear, we have this. This is what all that “doing it for attention”, “pronouns suck” and “groomer pedo” talk amounts too. People so scared to live that we have a dead body instead.
I hope she is at peace.
One of Bubba’s close friends put out a statement that said “are you happy now?? Bubba didn’t break the law or hurt anyone, are you happy now??” Which is true enough, especially if this guy wasn’t one of the usual anti trans politicians.
That’s tragic, heartbreaking and a good question to ask.
But unfortunately I think the answer is yes. Bigots are happy, any queer death is a reinforcement that their methods work. All are so quick to say “trans people are mentally ill” and the immediately do their best to make that person’s life a living hell, which is some twisted cruel logic. They don’t want us to exist, they call to exterminate us from public life and they think by making our lives difficult enough we can be shamed in to non-existentance.
We can’t let them win. Because victory is literally death, but we will always have to remember those who fell, honor their memory and use their tale as a warning against every piece of shit conservative bathroom bill deadname enforcement and trans healthcare blockade. Because unfortunately, trans people as a whole are very directly under attack. Please vote accordingly.
Yeah no they send us pms celebrating our suicide rate sometimes. They very much are happy.
Unfortunately the “shame” surrounding these things stem from the concept of sin and living as a “sinner” in a “fallen world”. I’ve been shamed countless times because of things the church did not agree with. I don’t know if he ever preached any transphobic ideas in his time, but biblical ideologies are rife with gender roles and toxic ideas about women and masculinity. Even if he didn’t preach any of that toxic garbage, he must have been struggling a lot with his own identity, even though he said it’s only for fun and stress relief (paraphrasing). Small towns don’t act gracefully towards people experimenting with their sexualities like this. Can only imagine the rejection he must have experienced having all of this play off on the grand stage of his life in that little town, since literally everyone there knew him.
Wow, you took the words right out of my mouth. This is just tragic in every way.
Read what he actually did before sobbing about his suicide
Dude was a giga pervert who stalked local women and posted pictures of real kids in fetish memes he made. dude can rot
4 day old account that has done pretty much nothing but post anti-trans bullshit.
Bro get a fucking a life you terminally online loser.
I comment on topics I find interesting. Cry about it.
And apparently what you find interesting is Conservative propaganda on trans people.
I find the modern debate interesting, yes.
Lmao, do you actually belive anything you’ve said on this app is a “debate” rather than you being an obvious right wing troll? Dude, get off lemmy and go the fuck outside for once, you terminally online redditor.
Yes I do think it’s healthy to hear opposing views. You are very angry for some reason, maybe relax a bit and you’d be more happy in life.
He wasn’t trans; he was a crossdresser.
Their own words: "transitioning transgender curvy girl, that loves smiling, clothes, and shoes!”
He emphatically stated that he does not feel like a woman and has not undertaken a medical transition. However, he has offered his Instagram handle as a method for people to reach out to him, which he claimed was a means to “make friends.”
“Just my wife knows about it,” Copeland said. “It’s a hobby I do to relieve stress. I have a lot of stress, and I’m not medically transitioning. It’s just a bit of a character I’m playing. … I don’t go out and seek solicitation or anything like that.”
That was stated to the people who outed him.
Quotes from a right wing expose on him that asked him questions? okay and?
Of course he’s going to say that to a news site for right wing people.
Yeah, they were probably fucking panicking.
The username was “transgender curvy girl”, I think that speaks volumes for how she wanted to be seen. I would love to ask her how she identified, but since she is gone and all we know is “girl” and “trans” in the space she felt safe, then we should absolutely be following her cue.
He emphatically stated that he does not feel like a woman and has not undertaken a medical transition. However, he has offered his Instagram handle as a method for people to reach out to him, which he claimed was a means to “make friends.”
“Just my wife knows about it,” Copeland said. “It’s a hobby I do to relieve stress. I have a lot of stress, and I’m not medically transitioning. It’s just a bit of a character I’m playing. … I don’t go out and seek solicitation or anything like that.”
Quotes from a right wing expose on him that asked him questions? okay and?
Of course he’s going to say that to a news site for right wing people.
So, I have a question. From the Daily Beast article:
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?
This is the NY Post. It’s a Murdoch-owned, rage-bait rag. It’s going to be slanted, if not completely exaggerated.
I would hope there is dashcam footage to corroborate their report.
Good point, what kind of wellness check involves a roadside stop?
It seems quite possible that the police pulled him over to harass him.
What incentive would the police have to murder a guy? What do you think is more likely, that the cops decided to murder some guy for cross dressing, or that this dude is so embarrassed that he got outed as a giga pervert who stalked local women and killed himself because everyone now knows
What a dumb comment. There is no evidence the police shot this guy, and all the evidence to suggest that he killed himself.
With the track record of the police, I’d say it’s a 50/50.
it’s a small Alabama town, might wanna rethink those odds
terminally online take
Brain dead take. Is your boyfriend a cop or something?
You know how you can look at people who say the government is trying to kill them and rightfully laugh at them as crazy? That’s how I feel about people who think a cop has a 50/50 chance of killing you in America
not sure what point you are trying to prove. A great majority of those people killed were armed. 8000 people is really not that much over an almost 10 year time span and all the justified shootings. You have 50x higher chance of dying in a car accident than dying by the hands of the police. That number because 300-500x if you are unarmed. The USA population is over 300m, this is a speck in the bigger picture.
Turn it around: He knew the police in his small town, do you think he expected them to make this roadside stop to help a recently outed queer person that did questionable things like fantasizing about killing a woman that everyone in town knows and becoming her by transitioning or uploading memes in a similar context with pictures belonging to real people to a porn website? I mean he knew them personally, I guess he knew their standing on queer, he might have felt threatened for a reason. I am not saying they shot him, just that he might have expected them to be everything but helpful.
Every cop had body/ dash cams, I doubt there’s anything conspiratorial in the mix.
Oh, sure. Nothing ever happens like that with cops. They never turn their cameras off or lie.
That doesn’t really count for anything unless people other than cops look at the footage. Not that I’m saying it should be made publicly available but somebody independent should see it.
If it turns out there’s no body cam footage that’s a problem too but again unless someone outside the police force can see that there’s no body cam footage the lack of footage isn’t ever going to be made public knowledge.
The police have body cam footage to make sure they’re doing their actual jobs and not something else, for the bloody useless if they turn them off or no one ever reviews the footage. They are not primarily there for the police’s benefit they’re there for ours.
in most states civilians can request body camera footage. if you believe there to be misdoings then request it and have the journalistic scoop of ages “Cop kills transgender woman after claimed suicide”
This is a god damn shame. This poor person probably could have had a much happier life if only they knew how. Knew how to escape the life that everyone else expected of them.
Instead it sounds like this poor soul spent their entire life supporting the very cause of their suffering. A lot of people would be happy to point out the irony in the double life he led. But, it’s hard to walk away from a life that’s all you’ve ever known.
We should all be like MuhammadJesusGaySex.
Or not be such a coward. He was a pastor to pay his bills, He could’ve left that life when he realized the incompatibility. All these conservatives (especially pastors) love to hate on anyone not cis gendered. It is a guarantee he got up in front of his church to bash the LGBT community every chance he could. I think this speaks much more about how hypocritical and two faced Christians are as a culture.
This is really sad. People deserve to be who they are.
do people deserve to be able to stalk local woman and write erotic fanfiction about them that involves their murder? 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
This is the same website that initially outed them. Unless you can provide a less shady source, I’m not inclined to believe them.
Alternative headline: Public official outed as a pervert who was stalking local women and posting pictures of kids to porn websites to further his “transition fetish”. Dude is a fucking pervert.
This is what happens when people are forced to repress themselves in order to fit in with what society says is acceptable.
What they want becomes bad but they still fantasize about it. So the fantasy’s become twisted and perverse. If this person was allowed to be who they wanted to be they may not have gone down such a dark path. It really just makes me sad to see things like this.
I completely agree, this is partially why I think “banning” trans people is just shooting everyone in the foot.
Orrrr maybe he’s just a sick pervert. I don’t think having fantasies about murdering and replacing woman is normal.
That isn’t normal. But being raised in the south where you are expected to be the gender you were born with, and then having to suppress your true feelings, leads to associating those feelings with “sick pervert” actions.
I’m not so sure about that. No amount of repressed sexuality makes you write murder fantasies about real local women.
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I mean, it’s in bad taste to involve real people, especially to post their pictures, in erotic fanfic, but if he never harmed or threatened anyone I don’t think that warrants more than taking things down and making and an apology to the people involved.
I certainly wouldn’t lump that in with people who actively harm people and maliciously invade people’s privacy.
You don’t think the woman who was featured in the murder-replacement fanfic wasn’t scared when she heard of this? I would say that’s pretty awful. She did not consent to play a part in this guys fetish that he shared over the internet publicly.
Dumb fucking take brah
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You are absolutely right…except the article even states that Brittni described herself as a transgender woman. So it seems appropriate for us to take Brittni’s word on that.
Sad story
Sad life, that he had to hide it, if he wanted to be out
“I always say, ‘We’re Mayberry 2023,’” he said about Smiths Station. “It really is like everybody knows your name. You know, everybody dies famous in a small town. That’s what it is. It is Friday Night Lights. It is mama’s apple pie. Our community is very, very low crime, very low drug abuse. Our number one problem is suicide. It is sad. I think a lot of it has to do with the military. I think some of it has to do with social media and the reality of that. That’s the number one problem we have.”
Just let people live their lives ffs
What’s really sad is this guy could’ve had a great support group among progressives.
Instead, he let the fear of retribution from his current peers dictate his decisions.
Copeland told 1819 News, which published the report on his 62nd birthday, that his online alter ego was a harmless “hobby” that did not go beyond his home.
“The only moral crossdressing is my crossdressing”
“What I do in private life has nothing to do with what I do in my holy life,” Copeland told 1819 reporter Craig Monger. Ironic
So the guy wanted power so badly he supported the GOP…but when they turned on him it was suddenly very sad. LOL. Sure.
Some ppl think that just being LGBTQ means you’re really a good person inside. He was perfectly fine to shit on other people but once it came to facing his own scrutiny he took the cowards way out.
