In the January-February-March 2022 edition of the Prohibition Party’s newsletter, the National Prohibitionist, the party introduced a new member: 27-year-old Zayne Chrisathemum. The newsletter describes Chrisathemum as a member of the “queer community (his own preferred term).” This community benefits from Prohibition, the Prohibitionist argues, because “[r]ecreational drugs and their attendant social problems are a particular scourge” of it.
Chrisathemum, who identifies as a “trans-woman” and Jewish, contributed the following opinion piece to the Prohibitionist on joining the Prohibition Party:
I am not your typical Prohibition Party member. I am 27, a trans woman and
Jewish. I am a direct contradiction of the
stereotype of Prohibitionists as all being
elderly Bible thumping zealots. That being said, I admire the contributions of our
elderly and Christian members and know
that without them we would have no
party. My experience as a member of the
LGBT community is a prime reason why I
am a prohibitionist.I am not a prohibitionist in spite of being trans, but in part because I am trans.
I am a recovering alcoholic and marijuana addict, a drop in a bucket where upwards of 25% of the LGBT community deals with alcoholism.This is in part due to the persecution we face in this society and due to just how ingrained bars are in our culture, for a very long time the gay bar was the only place where we could be ourselves. The issue of LGBT alcoholism and addiction is one that is deeply under
studied and does not receive enough attention within our community. Every major gay pride parade has floats promoting beers and liquors and every June (Pride Month), the beer section of the store is heavily beers and liquors in rainbow bottles. Big booze loves us as long as we continue to be major purchasers of their poison. Its deeply cynical and wrong, when everybody knows these companies would be just as ready to promote homophobia, were it more profitable than gay pride.LGBT people should support prohibition and temperance because alcohol is a factor in a huge percentage of violent crime, and this particularly applies to hate crimes. A study by Cardiff University found alcohol to be a factor in 90% of bias motivated crimes. LGBT people should support temperance because those who oppose us benefit when we are weakened by drugs and alcohol. LGBT people should support sobriety and opposing drugs (including alcohol and tobacco) because queer life is beautiful, and any life being cut short by cirrhosis or cancer is a terrible tragedy. LGBT people should support ending smoking because we are specially targeted by tobacco companies. Project SCUM (Yes that’s really what it was called) was a project by RJ Reynolds company to sell cigarettes specifically to LGBT people.
The fact that these people call us “scum”
while selling us smokeable poison should
infuriate anybody with a heart and cause
us to give up our cigarettes and end that
vile trade too. It is time to treat alcoholism
and addiction like the severe public health
issues they are. This involves both ending
the criminalization of users and devoting
real resources to combating addiction and
ending the large-scale sale of alcohol and
addictive drugs. It is time for the LGBT
community to support its sober members
and build more sober institutions such as
cafes and bookstores, rather than bars.The Prohibition Party has a variety of positions on LGBT issues within its ranks, but as long as people acknowledge my basic humanity and the inherent worth of the lives of LGBT people I believe that we can work together. I believe it is time for the left and the right to come together with regards to the sheer destruction addiction to alcohol, tobacco, drugs and gambling have on our society, and particularly our poorest and struggling members of our society. Let’s work together to build a future where alcohol related death is a thing of the past.
Interestingly, 2012 Prohibition Party presidential nominee Jack Fellure ran on a campaign platform of criminalizing homosexuality.
Must have been a Freudian slip.
I admire Pasta and agree with most of what he says in that video. I follow him on Twitter and he even gave a “like” to one of my Tweets a few months ago.
However, I disagree with one of his tactics. I get what he’s trying to do but I don’t think it’s a good idea to play gay porn in church to demonstrate the evils of homosexuality to his congregation. Women and children were in attendance.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=79FhEhWGXjw
Host – William Saturn
Pepe – Zayne
Pasta – Nathan Norman
Root’s teeth aren’t awesome anymore?
The Prohibition Party was considered progressive on women’s issues, because many female Prohibitionists claimed that alcoholism fueled social ills that disproportionately harmed women and children, such as domestic violence, unemployment, gambling, poverty, and family abandonment.
Perhaps the most famous Prohibitionist of the early 20th century was a woman named Carrie Nation, a leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. She entered saloons with a hatchet and smashed the liquor bottles.
Her Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Nation
It is interesting to see how the Prohibition Party has started evolving from a generally conservative party to one that is promoting Christian Democratic values; similar to being like the American Solidarity Party. Now that you think about it, the party does have a history of changing ideologies while retaining its signature stance; as it was originally considered a “progressive” party (especially on the issue of women’s rights).
Speaking of all these parties and the subject of this article, it reminds me of a trans candidate who is running for public office in Arkansas. Originally they tried forming their own party but decided to run as a “fusion” candidate between the Prohibition and American Solidarity parties. It seems that now they decided to run as an independent for their respective office with the endorsement of the Reform Party.
OR… Zayne can do just what she has done. I have been a Libertarian Party member since 1974 but in the early 60’s (before I was old enough to vote) I identified with the Drys. If the Prohibition Party has any way forward, they need people like Zayne.
Going beyond Anastasia, third parties of the left support civil libertarianism while rejecting sink-or-swim economic libertarianism. Zayne could go there.
Ah, I’ve got it… the subject of the article is a “recovering alcoholic” so she wants to ban alcohol for everyone else too. That sort of attitude is prevalent in the legacy duopoly, which wants to legislate out of existence everything it doesn’t people to be able to do.
Perhaps someday when she rediscovers personal responsibility, she’ll discover the Libertarian Party.
I am the woman who wrote the original article, and I am a she/her.
It is troubling to me that some commenters didn’t read my arguments for their merits or consider my words, but rather decided to attack my very existence within the Prohibition Party. I am not the only transgender prohibitionist out there and as more of us get disaffected with the Democratic and Republican parties, the more of us among you independents will there be.
Wow. These rainbow people have infected literally every faucet of life, even the prohibitionists can’t escape it!
I used the same pronouns the National Prohibitionist used.
If this is a “trans-woman” shouldn’t you use “she/her” instead of “he/him”?