Newlyweds Jonathan Joss and Tristan Kern de Gonzales held each other in their final moment together Sunday.
Joss, 59, the voice actor best known as John Redcorn on “King of the Hill,” had just been shot in the head in front of their San Antonio home.
“I didn’t want him to struggle and everything, so I decided to tell him I loved him. And despite the severity of everything, he was able to look up at me and acknowledge what I was saying, so I know he heard me,” said Kern de Gonzales, 32. “I just kept telling him: ‘It’s OK. You need to cross over. You don’t need to keep struggling. You need to go ahead and cross over easy.’”
Kern de Gonzales said Joss’ killer also had final words for the actor. He called him and his husband “jotos,” a Spanish slur for gay people.
“I’ve been called that word while I was sitting on a bench with Jonathan, eating lunch,” Kern de Gonzales said. “And I got called that holding Jonathan while he died.”
Shortly after, police arrested one of the pair’s neighbors, Sigfredo Alvarez Ceja, 56, in connection with Joss’ killing.
I think the takeaway is just don’t live in Texas. For any reason.
Low cost of living states trap you.
I would LOVE to leave Oklahoma. But a lot of the same reasons I want to leave are the reasons I’m trapped here (legal discrimination against trans people, absolutely no form of support for domestic violence survivors, and crippling PTSD from growing up in a state that doesn’t view me as human.)
I got the hell out of my shit red state and moved to progressive bubble. Much respect, I don’t have to face the same struggles as you, but there are two openly trans people where I work and one is a red state bigotville escapee. Some super progressive places have support programs to help like this one: https://www.transrelocationfund.com/
The thing is, even if you give up and say, ok things will never change, I’m leaving my home bc I’ve accepted I don’t belong here, it spreads. The goal is to shape America into the reality they want. If you don’t stop it, it’s not contained to TX, or LA, or the south, or the fly-over states, or the suburbs/rural areas.
Look at Roe v Wade. That didn’t just happen overnight. State level policies spread from within and then eventually paralyzed a federal protection for the entire country.
The only reason that even happened was bc the same people that wanted segregated schools also wanted to maintain federal tax exemption, so they saw Roe v. Wade as an opportunity to gain support for their movement. It had nothing to do with being morally opposed to abortion.
The Real Origins of the Religious Right
6 years after Roe v. Wade, in 1979, the Heritage Foundation co-founder and political activist Paul Weyrich used abortion as a platform to deny Jimmy Carter a second term bc he knew it would be easier to get people on board regarding Roe v. Wade rather than getting people to support their movement protecting segregated schools.
Weyrich’s goal was to always gain power and ground for conservative values to dominate the entire country. He wrote about the need to dismantle the federal government decades before anyone heard of RAGE or DOGE.
They use federal bureaucracy as a talking point now for the same reasons they seized Roe v. Wade back then. Bc it’s a lot easier to get people on your side and convince them your goal is to get rid of unnecessary and “harmful” federal policy, rather than admitting your true goal is be allowed to steamroll federal protections with zero consequence.
May 21, 2025: Justice Department ends police reform agreements and halts investigations into major departments
So the entire U.S. believes that? Across all those cities and states? Or does a select group of people seem to be speaking for the entire U.S. and making some very concerning policy decisions regarding federal protections?
That Politico article is an excellent read, thanks for sharing!
I didn’t read all of your wall of text but Roe v. Wade is a bad example. The American people should have never relied on case law precedent and should have pushed to enshrine the protections in law.
Same-sex marriage is a better example as it is protected by case law precedent in Obergefell but has also been enshrined in law through the Respect for Marriage Act.
Roe v Wade was the original example and how segregationists gained control of a large chunk of American voters just in time for Reagan to be president. Same sex marriage came later.
It’s explained in the wall of text, but bottom line is you can thank the Heritage Foundation.
Which means Americans had that much longer to enshrine a woman’s right to choose in law and didn’t.
That is my whole point. Relying on a “historical interpretation” was always a mistake.
If you make it law then it has some measure of permanence. Better if you can get a constitutional amendment passed.
What?
The mistake was giving supreme court justices appointments for life, but the government should definitely not be given easier access to make amendments to the constitution.
The point about Roe v Wade is that people need to understand history, and how they have been used to further an agenda. They need to know that many of these issues, were never actually issues most Americans were divided over.
They were turned into divisive issues by wealthy shadow men controlling the narrative, and treating government issues like advertisement campaigns.
I had no idea until very recently that before the Heritage Foundation used it as an opportunistic platform, the southern Baptist leadership actually had a favorable viewpoint regarding Roe v Wade…
I grew up in the southern Baptist church, and I didn’t know that because barely anybody in this country knows that, and absolutely nobody in the southern Baptist church fucking knows that.
You want to get people to wake up, and stop falling for whatever the next “issue” is (whether it’s DEI, immigration, govt bureaucracy, AI regulations), you need them to understand the history and reality of who is actually creating the narrative and manipulating them.
Do you understand how government and law works in the US?
Case precedent, as demonstrated with Roe, can be overruled by a majority of SCOTUS.
A law goes through the house, senate and then is signed by the President and becomes law.
A US Constitutional amendment requires a 2/3 vote in the house and senate and then 3/4 of the state legislatures to ratify.
Each one of those offer greater security of whatever issue is at hand.
Nothing I said makes it easier to amend the conversation but relying on case precedent is the same as relying on a “verbal” contract.
You understand that this goes both ways? The more we accept constitutional amendments as the norm, the more we place our liberties and constitutional rights most people just kind of assume are always guaranteed, at risk.
Look at how Trump handles executive orders. Imagine what he would do if people just accepted constitutional amendments no big deal.
I live in Louisiana, and I’m watching this happen right now with my governor and the state constitution. The amendments were worded in a very confusing way, and even legal experts agreed that it was unclear what the repercussions of the amendments passing would be.
In a surprising outcome, the state shot down all 4 of the proposed constitutional amendments, because people are recognizing this guy is a tyrant trying to abuse his executive power.
Pretty clear that people don’t want those amendments right? Cool, so problem solved let’s move on. Nope, he’s making us vote again on the same amendments because he’s, hoping that he can word it just right, and pad it with enough things that will please his voter base, so eventually voter apathy will kick in for the opposition and allow his amendments to pass.
State ≠ Federal
The harder it is to do, the harder it is to undo. That’s why you enshrine it in law or a constitutional amendment.
When you don’t then (currently) 5 people can decide to completely change decades of accepted practice.
I’m not sure how to explain it any simpler.
Same-sex marriage is a better example because there’s been rumblings from the SCOTUS about revisiting Obergefell however, with the Respect for Marriage Act passed under Biden, same-sex marriage is protected by law. Revisiting Obergefell won’t change that; it would require Congress.