Anti-LGBTQ Tennessee Lt. Gov. McNally Comments On Racy Instagram Pics of Young Gay Male

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UPDATE TO THIS STORY: Lt. Governor Randy Mcnally has issued a statement blaming us for calling out his hypocrisy – but, importantly, not denying he’s the one who made these comments, not claiming he was hacked, and not blaming an underling. You can watch our interview with Franklyn, the man in the pics, here. Or listen to the PODCAST.

 

Tennessee is currently leading the nation in anti-LGBTQ hate, with 26 anti-lgbtq bills moving through the legislature. Last week Governor Lee made national news for quickly signing a cruel trans youth health care ban, and the nation’s first drag show felony bill, which threatens to lock up drag performers.

What made the bill even more absurd was the revelation that Governor Lee himself had dressed in drag, on a school campus, in front of minors, back in 1977.

Drag for me, felony for thee.

Lee’s hypocrisy made him a laughingstock, even getting him sent up on Saturday Night Live.

Well hang onto your hats, folks, because it turns out Lee isn’t the only huge hypocrite at the highest levels of Tennessee’s government.

Enter Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, who it turns out has been openly leaving heart emojis and other encouraging comments under very racy pics on the instagram page of a young gay male aspiring performer named Franklyn McClur, who grew up in Knoxville – McNally is from Oak Ridge, but represents parts of Knoxville, where he lives with his wife Janice. They have 2 adult daughters. Mcnally is Roman Catholic.

We were alerted to the pics by an anonymous twitter user who came across them – someone who knew of Franklyn and was entertained by his page. They sent us screen shots and told us where to find them. We were in disbelief.

Sure enough, there they were – and still are, at this writing: Visit Franklyn’s page here under the moniker “@FranklynSuperstar”

McNally repeatedly used his VERIFIED account to post underneath some of Franklyn’s raciest pictures. McNally is apparently very big on heart and flame emojis.

Underneath a few Franklyn and McNally exchange comments, seeming to know one another. McNally even calls Franklyn by “Finn”, his nickname, which is not mentioned anywhere on his page, and speaks to a definite familiarity between them. (Franklyn says they have never met in person)

Knowing McNally would surely claim to be hacked when we posted about this, we decided to call up Franklyn to hear the details from him directly.

Franklyn is currently 20 years old. He grew up in Knoxville (which McNally represents parts of), but no longer lives there. He says he and McNally became friends on Facebook through mutual friends a few years back, and that McNally got Franklyn’s Instagram from there and has been commenting for a while now.

About his pictures, which are revealing, Franklyn says “My body is art, I like to use it the way god intended.”

Franklyn told us he always found it a bit random that the Lieutenant Governor of Tennessee was commenting on his page, but since he’s not a political person he didn’t make the connection that McNally was simultaneously helping to spearhead a deeply anti-LGBTQ legislature which is pushing the most anti-LGBTQ bills in the country.

About the way McNally posted on his page, Franklyn told us he has never taken what appears to be flirting seriously. “I just thought he was older and out of touch. I’ve always taken it as a compliment.  I don’t dislike him or think he’s a bad person, he’s one of the only people who has consistently uplifted me and made me feel good.”

But when we told him about the drag show felony bill, and the anti-trans youth health care bill, and so many of the other bills snaking their way through the Republican supermajority-led legislature, Franklyn agreed that was wrong, saying “It’s wrong to ban drag, wrong to ban anything that isn’t hurting anyone. I don’t support hate of any kind.”

We asked Franklyn if at any point he thought McNally may have been hacked. And he said the thought crossed his mind, but that since they had become friends back in 2020 he (understandably) assumes McNally’s team would know by now if that was the case: “They would be aware by now if he was hacked. It’s evident he’s not hacked.”

It’s worth noting the comments McNally made on Franklyn’s page stretch back months ago. Add that to the fact that Franklyn says he has been messaging with McNally for years, and let’s just say if this is the work of hackers, they’re the most patient hackers ever.

The main point Franklyn wanted to get across was that he has no animosity towards Randy McNally. “I don’t hate him. I don’t dislike him. I don’t have a negative opinion on him. I’ve had a transformation since we started talking — I was more christian, now I’m more not christian. We were friends back before I was more openly myself. Before I was posting things more mature… If he’s hitting on me it’s real out of touch hitting on me.”

Franklyn’s appreciation for McNally is clearly genuine. But while McNally may be supportive of Franklyn, when it comes to the LGBTQ community in Tennessee, he is anything but.

As with the governor’s drag past, the hypocrisy on display here is, yet again, jaw-dropping.

We don’t judge Randy for liking Franklyn’s pictures. In fact, we’re glad he does. We just wish McNally and Tennessee Republicans would stop the hate and treat everyone in Tennessee’s LGBTQ community in the supportive way Lt. Gov. McNally treats Franklyn on Instagram.

Instead, Tennessee Republicans have made hate their #1 priority this session to distract from all the different ways this TN GOP supermajority is failing our state, with outcomes at the bottom in poverty, violent crime, health, per pupil spending, and so much more.

The hate is simply a distraction they use to cling to power, and they don’t care what it does to our most vulnerable communities. What a better state we would have if we all accepted each other for who we are and supported one another.

Speaking of support, Franklyn adds that he would appreciate any support y’all are willing to give him on TIK TOK or better yet VENMO @Franklyn-McClur, as he’s currently working on making his way out to Los Angeles to become, in his words, “the next Doja Cat” (he also wanted to send a shout-out to Justin Bieber, and to let record labels know they should all feel free to contact him!)

Also feel free to support our friends at the Tennessee Equality Project who fight the hate McNally supports HERE, and CHIP IN to help us Holler HERE.

TN DAD TO TN GOP: “I WAS WRONG NOT TO ACCEPT MY TRANS SON.”

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Below is a letter sent by the father of a 23 year-old trans son to Tennessee Republican legislators. His family was among those who testified in hearings at the state legislature in an effort to stop the trans youth health care ban from moving forward this week. So far, it has not slowed the bill, which will be on the house floor this week. Call your reps.
—
I am the dad of a transgender 23 year old son.  I am here to tell you I did not accept my child being transgender.  We fought, my wife and I came close to divorcing over it.

But in hindsight I WAS WRONG.  And you passing this law without making exception for hormone blocker and hormone therapy is wrong too.  Parents and medical teams, along with their children, must make these decisions.  This is a medical condition, not a fad, or trend, as I once believed.

My son’s brain, chromosomes or hormones do not match his reproductive system.  His life has been extremely difficult with Trauma, bullying, physical and sexual abuse and constant depression, anxiety and self harm and suicide attempts.

Once he got on hormone treatment, that all went away.

It wasn’t until then that I realized this was a necessity for my child to survive.  We have worked through our differences and he gave me the honor of giving him his new first name.  I struggled with pronouns and just never saw him as a boy until others started recognizing him in public as a boy.  People that didn’t know him.

When I realized the rest of the world saw our son as he felt inside, I was thankful that he had the ability to live his authentic life.

PLEASE DON’T DO WHAT I DID.  FOLLOW THE SCIENCE, DON’T TAKE AWAY PARENTAL RIGHTS.

All of the medical associations including World, American medical, American Pediatric, American Psychological, American Therapy and American Endocrinology all find these treatments are ABSOLUTELY appropriate, reversible and life saving in some cases.

Therapy doesn’t always work, nor do antidepressants.  Approving this bill in its current form will cost lives.

Sincerely,

****
Retired US Navy, US Army

Sen. Campbell Warns of TN GOP Fascism

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TN Dems Grill Matt Walsh

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SENATOR JANICE BOWLING CAUGHT IN FURRY LIE LIE

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During a committee meeting a few months ago, Republicans Senator Janice Bowling and Rep. Mary Littleton perpetuated the myth that there are students in Tennessee identifying as cats and using “litter boxes” to go to the bathroom in some Tennessee schools.

The lie is part of a wave of misinformation intended to harm public education by giving public schools a bad reputation, and also to target LGBTQ people. As SALON puts it:

“The first notable instance of furry panic occurred when right-wing activists pushed a false claim about schools in Michigan placing litter boxes in bathrooms to allow furry students to use them, and the bogus rumors about furry infiltration into the public education system have only grown from there.”

Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire, known for his transphobia, talked about it in an anti-trans propaganda film he made, and Joe Rogan helped add fuel to the fire before eventually admitting he had no evidence of it.

That brings us back to Janice and Mary. Since their comments were made when the legislature was out of session we didn’t have a chance to ask them about it until yesterday, when we finally caught Senator Bowling coming out of Day 1 of the Tennessee state senate.

We asked her if being featured on an NBC NEWS debunking was enough to get her to admit she was wrong and apologize.

Surprise! She would not.

Instead, Janice doubled down. Senator Bowling repeatedly insisted the myth of furries in schools was not a lie, but instead of “litter boxes in schools”, which is what she initially claimed, she now said it was “LEASHES” in schools – meaning kids were walking around attached to leashes intended for pets.

The natural question: “Where is this happening?”

“Franklin County schools,” Janice said, claiming she talked with the superintendent, who told her about all of these leashes and furries and such.

The thing is, Franklin County Schools has telephones. The superintendent’s name is Stanley Bean.

So we called Mr. Bean and asked him ourselves about Janice Bowling’s accusations that his schools had children walking around on leashes.

Mr. Bean’s response: “There are no litter boxes in our schools. There are no students on leashes. I don’t know where Senator Bowling is coming up with this stuff.”

Apparently Mr. Bean was made aware of Bowling’s lies about furries and litter boxes in their schools back when she initially talked about them in committee, when the superintendent of Tullahoma schools, who is a friend of Bean’s, told him Senator Bowling was claiming such things were going on in their district.

Superintendent Bean says he called Senator Bowling himself and asked her where she was getting that information. Bowling told him it was coming from parents, so Mr. Bean did the logical thing and asked Senator Bowling to bring the parents to a meeting with him so they could talk about what they had seen, and where.

Bowling agreed.

When the time came for the meeting, Senator Bowling showed up, but there were no parents to be found. “She told me they were afraid to tell me in person,” Bean said. “So I told her that without any evidence she needed to retract what she had said about out schools. She said she would.”

Bean says the next thing he knew, Bowling was on local radio – but instead of retracting and apologizing, Senator Bowling was claiming to have put a stop to all the furrying and litter boxing and what-not, by issuing an order to Mr. Bean to put a stop to it.

Bowling made herself sound not like a fool who had fallen for a lie, but a hero.

Bean was angry. But he decided to let it go.

Unfortunately for Senator Bowling, letting things go isn’t something we at the Holler are very good at. So yesterday we asked Bowling about it at the legislature, and instead of apologizing, she insisted Mr. Bean told her there were kids on leashes in Franklin County Schools, and angrily told us we simply couldn’t handle the truth.

As it turns out, it’s Senator Bowling who very clearly has trouble with the truth.

There are no furries in Franklin County Schools. Or Leashes. Or Litter Boxes.

Senator Janet Bowling has been duped, but instead of admitting her mistake, she childishly and irresponsibly added to the problem by piling lie after lie on top of it – behavior unbecoming of anyone, but especially of a sitting state Senator who is supposed to be representing her constituents and her local school districts, not lying about them and defaming them.

At least Meow we know the truth.

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TODAY’S HOLLER: THE (CONSTITUTION) TERMINATOR

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LOOKING FOR AN ATTORNEY? HOLLER AT ABBY RUBENFELD.  SHE SPECIALIZES IN FAMILY LAW, CIVIL RIGHTS, EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION, PERSONAL INJURY, WILLS, AND DUI. ABBY STRONGLY BELIEVES EVERYONE SHOULD BE PROTECTED REGARDLESS OF SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS.  SHE ROCKS.

THE (CONSTITUTION) TERMINATOR

It has to feel weird to be one of those MAGA folks out there calling themselves a “strict constitutionalist” these days while supporting a defeated ex-president who just called for the constitution to be “terminated” because of a Twitter thread with no actual news in it.

To bring you up to speed, new Twitter chief Elon Musk, who has been embracing the far right lately in a big way – bringing even the worst Nazis and insurrectionists back into the Twitter fold and even posting Nazi memes himself (and amplifying Kanye West hours after he expressed his love for Hitler) – teased the release of what he called the “TWITTER FILES”.

Elon said it would be a series of internal docs that delivered the goods on the company’s throttling of the Hunter Biden laptop story in the run-up to the 2020 election. Instead the thread (posted by Matt Taibbi, who has a problematic history of misogyny that goes back to his time in RUSSIA, of all places) really just showed that Twitter was making a good faith effort not to allow yet another attempt at election tampering by foreign actors to sway a presidential election in Trump’s favor AGAIN.

Was it the right decision? Maybe, maybe not. But was it understandable that Twitter was wary of allowing that sketchily-sourced story that originated with Rudy Giuliani, who was up to his eyeballs in lies and surrounded by shady foreign players, not to proliferate on their platform? It absolutely was.

To this day it’s still unclear what the source of the laptop really was, and the mac store guy – who will only talk to Newsmax, etc. – has changed his story more than once. 🚨This Extremely IMPORTANT piece from wash post (with NO PAYWALL) reminds us how shady the sourcing of the Hunter Laptop was/is, and why Twitter and other outlets had EVERY REASON to be suspicious of the Mac store dude, Giuliani, etc — EVEN FOX PASSED ON IT.

None of that context was included in the thread. Instead it was couched as evidence of government interference in an election, even though as FRANKLIN, TN conservative DAVID FRENCH points out the Biden campaign was not the government, so the tweet Taibbi posted of an email where they ask to have Hunter’s dick pics removed was by definition NOT “government tampering”.

French says “Elon Musk & Tucker Carlson Don’t Understand the First Amendment”  – and he’s right. Twitter is a private company—not the federal government, which means they are allowed to make editorial decisions with an eye towards their bottom line.

It’s not a free speech violation, it’s capitalism.

FRENCH: “no amount of misguided rhetoric can transform a Twitter story into a government scandal.”


Ultimately nothing in the Taibbi thread was really news. We knew Twitter had agonized over what to do about the laptop story. We’ve even heard their executives concede that throttling it may have been the wrong thing to do. What it really showed was a company stressing over how to do the right thing.

The lack of revelations led to Rolling Stone calling it a  “SNOOZEFEST” 💤 😴 and NBC rightly framing it as a “rehashing” of old news.

🎯 Another conservative Tim Miller sumned it up by saying “In reality, all they really had was a digital erection.” – pointing out that nobody has a constitutional right to share Hunter’s dick pics.

The problem is, none of these criticisms will pierce the bubble. It’s already being taken for granted in MAGA circles that this thread is the smoking gun, because their Dear Leader Trump has told them as much – and is now literally saying the constitution must be “TERMINATED” over it, so he can be installed as president once again.

As LIZ CHENEY says. “No honest person can now deny that Trump is an enemy of the Constitution.” 🇺🇸

Project Lincoln (former/current Republicans) rightly say “Trump’s comments should have been immediately condemned by every Republican in the nation… Trump and the MAGA movement must be defeated of the 🇺🇸 experiment will come to a crashing end.”

🔥Yet as Conservative Charlie Sykes points out, he is still the 2024 GOP frontrunner: “The last 2 weeks: Trump pledged solidarity with 1/6 rioters, dined w/ fans of Hitler, called to terminate the Constitution— And remains the clear GOP nomination favorite. No wonder they’d rather talk about Hunter’s dick pix.”

Meanwhile Elon Musk is out there acting like he’s some sort of hero of free speech, even though he just banned Kanye West for posting a Swastika, and he won’t reinstate Alex Jones because he personally lost a child and knows how that feels.

Elon didn’t pay $44 BILLION to erase the lines around free speech. He did it so he can be the one to draw them.

Question for FOX NEWS — Does this count as election theft also or is it only when it happens against Trump? We’ll hang up and listen.

Yet again, the silence from Republicans as their party’s standard-bearer shows his authoritarian streak is as strong as ever makes them complicit. We will continue to point that out at every turn.

As always, Your support helps us do this work, so please consider chipping in monthly if you aren’t yet, it all really helps.

– The Holler

P.S. – Stop for a second and imagine how we would view this from afar if this was happening in another country. 🇺🇸

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TODAY’S HOLLER:

OH HEY TUCKER: As they go after Hunter for his laptop/emails, important to remember one of them is Tucker Carlson asking him to help his kid get into college.

NORTH CAROLINA: After a gunfire attack on electrical substations caused a regional power outage, the sheriff answers “anything’s possible” if it was related to a drag show happening at the time.😳 BUT THE SHOW WENT ON 🗣️👇🏽🏳️‍🌈 ❤️

😳🇺🇸

WHAT IS “WOKE” ANYWAY?: Y’all— Desantis suspended a state attorney for being “WOKE”, so his lawyers had to define it. Their answer: “The belief there are systemic injustices in 🇺🇸 and the need to address them.”🤔 Translation: they’re fighting to suppress an OBVIOUS TRUTH.

NOT PRO-LIFE: 🇺🇸 has higher maternal mortality rates than other countries (because we don’t have universal health care) — and Tennessee is at the bottom (because we haven’t expanded Medicaid) If you don’t support those policies, stop calling yourself “pro-life”

HAMILTON COUNTY: “It hurts… but I’m not leaving. I want a better future for my children.” HAMILTON COUNTY in the national news for extremist School board member Rhonda Thurman calling Latino students a “burden” — leading to harassment & threats towards families.

SECRETLY WOKE SOUTHERN MEN: We can’t get enough of these “Secretly Woke Southern Men” videos from Shane Hartline, please never stop 😂😂.

HOSPITAL STATEMENT: “a temporary pause to review current practices” Methodist Le Bonheur in MEMPHIS finally goes public with why they suddenly canceled treatment for transgender patients (as Republicans attack them).

HAMILTON COUNTY JUDGE: “THIS IS ABSURD… I WILL NOT SIGN THIS.” Remember road raging Michael Harvey, who followed a woman & son home and threatened them? DA Coty Wamp’s office tried to give him a plea deal the victim was against (and he blamed Crohn’s disease🤔)

ALSO IN CHATTANOOGA: 🤔CHARGES DROPPED — DUI, drug possession charges against Davis Lundy (ex-adviser to Hamilton  County Mayor Weston Wamp DROPPED despite an open bottle of wine, failed test, 23 grams of what he says was CBD. Wamp’s sister Coty Wamp is the DA. She handed it off to Marion County ADA Cara Sapp.

Seems Rep. Matt Gaetz did not get a warm welcome in Nashville this weekend…

Can someone ask Marsha Blackburn if we’re supposed to credit Biden with this? Or does he only get blame when it goes up? Just so we’re all on the same page.

Ruth covers authoritarianism for a living.

Stuart worked on 5 Republican presidential campaigns 👇🏽

PSA: If you can’t see how true this is, you’re probably not a moderate. 🎯

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AFTER DECADES OF UNDERINVESTMENT, WHITE TN REPUBLICANS GRILL HBCU TSU FOR DOING TOO WELL

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REP. JUSTIN JONES ARRIVES AT THE CAPITOL

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