A Lyft driver in Washington DC has been fired after telling a gay passenger he’ll “burn in hell” and refusing to let the man out of the car until they prayed away his sins.

Elizabeth Foster, the principal of Anderson Mill Elementary School — a public school in the town of Moore, South Carolina (population 13,739) — reportedly rejected the inclusion of a 4th grade student’s essay promoting LGBTQ-acceptance from a book of student essays “on society.”

The principal believed the 10-year-old student’s essay would “make other parents upset … due to the type of school this is, the people that work here and the students and families of the students that go here,” creating an “undesirable situation at the school,” according to a lawsuit filed in federal court by the child’s parents.

An Illinois grand jury has indicted "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett on 16 felony counts of disorderly conduct for filing a false police report, according to the Cook County State Attorney's Office.

The grand jury returned two separate sets of charges, Robert Foley, a senior advisor in the state attorney's office told ABC News.

The first set is related to what Smollett told officers about the alleged attack, including that the attackers called him racial and homophobic slurs, struck him with their hands, put a noose around his neck, and poured some sort of chemical substance on him.

A lawyer who subjected aircraft crew to "prolonged" racist abuse on a November flight from Mumbai to London was convicted of assault Wednesday.

Uxbridge Magistrates' Court heard that Simone Burns, who goes by Simone O'Broin, also spat at a crew member and grabbed her by the arm after staff refused to serve her more alcohol, the UK's Press Association news agency reported.

Burns, from Hove, England, began her racist rant on the Air India flight when flight attendants declined to sell her a fourth bottle of wine. Prosecutor Lauren Smith told Uxbridge Magistrates' Court that Burns, who is 50, began "swearing and shouting," calling the flight crew "f***ing Indian money-grabbing c***s."
When a cabin supervisor attempted to intervene, Burns spat in her face, swore at her, and "grabbed her by her right upper arm and squeezed it," Smith said.

At first, you might not realize the flyer was put there by a white supremacy group.

The poster, in shades of black, white and teal, features Andrew Jackson on horseback. The accompanying text reads: "European roots, American greatness."

Flyers like this, posted across the country by American neo-Nazi and white supremacist group Identity Evropa are popping up far more than they used to. Others feature George Washington. According to a new report by the Anti-Defamation League, white supremacy propaganda increased by 182 percent in 2018 compared with the year before.

The increase in flyers and other propaganda reflects a relatively new strategy for hate groups, the ADL says. Under intense scrutiny, white supremacists are reluctant to show their face in public, so they're relying more on leaflets and posters to spread hate without putting themselves at personal risk, it adds.

California lawmakers were showered with more than $810,000 in gifts last year, many from powerful interest groups lobbying the state who handed out concert and professional sports tickets, spa treatments, gourmet dinners and trips to a dozen countries, new state reports show.

The annual economic disclosure reports shed light on how state legislators can augment their annual $110,459 salaries with gifts that allow them to travel the world and eat at expensive restaurants, often in the company of corporate executives seeking to influence their decisions in the Legislature.

“The truth is the vast majority of gifts and trips are given because the gift givers want something in return,” said Rey Lopez-Calderon, executive director of California Common Cause, a government watchdog organization. “It's not just a question of the gift giver wanting something in return, but that the public could infer that even if it's not true. There is potential for the public's faith in government to be undermined.”

Franci Neely, a Houston socialite and the ex-wife of Astros owner Jim Crane, was recorded harassing a black family for taking photos on a scenic boulevard in celebration of their daughter's first birthday. Neely had her unleashed Pomeranian with her, and zero shoes.

Kelyn and Isaiah Allen hired a professional photographer to take pics of their baby daughter Anja. The couple had set up blankets and brought a few balloons to the North Boulevard in Houston, a picturesque esplanade frequented by individuals wishing to capture a special memory.

However, as the Allens were photographing their daughter, Franci Neely became angered that they were blocking the sidewalk. In a now-viral video, the barefoot Neely is seen with her leash-less dog, approaching the family and screaming at them for taking pictures on the esplanade. According to Kelyn, Neely passed several groups similarly taking photos to approach Kelyn and her family, yelling, "You are trampling the grass that we pay for."

A video showing a white woman swearing at the general manager of a Mexican restaurant in West Virginia for speaking Spanish went viral over the weekend.

“English is our first language, so you need to speak English,” the woman, identified in the video as Jill, screamed at Sergio Budar, the manager. “Get the fuck out of my country.”

One of two videos capturing the incident shows how customers at Tampico Mexican Restaurant in Parkersburg, West Virginia, were astonished at the woman’s remarks.

An 11-year-old student was arrested after refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and allegedly telling a teacher that “the flag is racist and the national anthem is offensive to black people,” according to reports.

The boy, a student at Lawton Chiles Middle Academy in Lakeland, Fla., was charged with disrupting a school function and resisting arrest without violence for the Feb. 4 outburst, according to Bay News 9.

He was also issued a three-day suspension.

His mother, Dhakira Talbot, said officials took things too far by arresting her son, who she said is in gifted classes and has been bullied in the past.

America is, quite famously, a nation founded on the principle of freedom of religion. As a result it is easy to understand why many people would be uncomfortable with certain kinds of religious practices (mostly notably prayer) and education in public schools. A little over a week ago President Trump tweeted his support for the introduction of Biblical literacy classes in schools, drawing attention to efforts by a variety of Christian groups to put the Bible back on the high school agenda.

Following Trump’s statement there was a flurry of media coverage of the issue. Fox News reported that “at least six states, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Virginia and West Virginia have introduced legislation this year pushing for public schools to offer Bible literacy classes,” noting that these classes would be electives. (The Indiana bill is not actually a Bible course bill at all. It demands that the previously existing world religions electives class has to include a conversation about the Bible).

There is a strategy here: Project Blitz, an initiative sponsored by the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, the National Legal Foundation and the WallBuilders ProFamily Legislative Network, has been orchestrating the push to create these bills.

As prominent SMU religious studies professor Mark Chancey has written, it’s actually already legal to teach the Bible in schools, so in some sense these bills are unnecessary. Courses like the one Trump is tweeting have been around for a century. Chancey told The Daily Beast that “it is important to recognize that Bible course bills and their sponsors may have different motivations…sometimes a bill is clearly about more than just biblical literacy, and that's definitely the case with Project Blitz bills.” Other measures that Project Blitz has called for includes the promotion of the motto “In God We Trust,” the introduction of a “year of the Bible” and the limiting of the rights of same-sex couples and transgender people. Chancey told me, “Project Blitz is weaponizing Biblical Literacy for the cultural wars.”

Students at Immaculata Catholic School in Durham, North Carolina, won’t be attending classes today after extremist right wing groups threatened protests over the school’s planned Black History Month celebration.

The event would have focused on African-American women and one of the planned speakers was lesbian city councilor Vernetta Alston.

“As a pastor, I cannot place our Imaculata students into this contentious environment,” school administrator Christopher VanHaight wrote in a letter to parents.

Another day, another religious right protest at a public library.

Evangelical Christians have a new target for their inane protests – drag queens. The perpetually perturbed are up in arms that drag queens are reading stories to children in public libraries.

All over the country, the radical right is showing up to terrify children and parents in the name of God. While the religious zealots would protest outside of abortion providers to shame and scare women who are at their most vulnerable, now they’re focused on being child abusers.

Tom Bianchi is a longtime male erotic photographer and HIV activist whose photographs have helped document gay men’s sexual history on Fire Island and elsewhere. But as of this morning, you won’t be seeing his images on Instagram anymore because the photo-sharing platform recently banned him.

The shot that got Bianchi banned was called “Untitled, 457,” a picture from his collection entitled Fire Island Pines: Polaroids 1975-1983. The shot simply showed a naked man sitting on a bedside with his back to the camera. It showed the top of the man’s buttocks but was otherwise non-obscene. At the point of its deletion, it allegedly had over 5,000 likes.

Bianchi’s banning isn’t necessarily surprising. The Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform has a habit of deleting supposedly risqué homoerotic content, including tasteful pictures of nude athletes, an image of Queer Eye food guy Antoni Porowski in his underwear and even a lovely image of a lesbian couple cuddling in bed with their child.

Two women prominent within an extremist, anti-trans group of feminists filmed themselves taunting and harassing a transgender activist.

The livestream is no longer available on Facebook, but according to HuffPost, British trans-exclusionary radical feminists Posie Parker and Julia Long repeatedly mocked and misgendered trans activist Sarah McBride, who is the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, during a meeting in Washington D.C.

Parker reportedly misgendered McBride and said that she “gets paid probably quite a lot of money to lobby the government to try and make sure that women and girls have absolutely no right to have any space anymore.”

Florida prosecutors are exploring hate crime charges against a man who was arrested on Martin Luther King Jr. Day after brandishing a gun and yelling racial slurs at a group of black youths.

Mark Bartlett, 51, was arrested for illegally carrying a concealed weapon after a confrontation with a group of bicyclists participating in the “Bikes Up, Guns Down” event in Miami’s upscale Brickell area, the Miami Herald reported.