Man Gets 15-Plus Years For Burning Pride Flag

An Iowa man will have a lot of time to reflect on how burning an LGBTQ flag in June wasn't the right move. The AP reports that Adolfo Martinez, 30, was convicted last month, and Wednesday he was sentenced to at least 15 years behind bars for an arson hate crime, with an additional 30 days tacked on for harassment, per Story County records.

The June 11 incident took place after Martinez got kicked out of the Dangerous Curves strip club in Ames and threatened to come back and burn the bar down, per an Ames Police Department spokesman.

Police were called to the scene shortly after midnight, which is when they found, burning in the street outside the bar, a car tire and a gay pride banner Martinez had ripped off the front of the Ames United Church of Christ, reported KCCI at the time.

The flag featured a rainbow design and read "God is still speaking." "We believe God is still speaking to us through the Bible and through each other ... and because of that we've been able to get to a place where we can affirm all of God's children, including queer people," said the Rev.

Eileen Gebbie, a church minister who herself is gay. Martinez told KCCI in June that he was "guilty as charged" and that it was his "honor" to burn the flag.

"It is a judgment and it's written to execute vengeance on the heathen," he said. The judge was all for the maximum sentence, as Martinez has a history of harassment.

"Nobody got shot [and] nobody was sexually assaulted," says Gebbie, who tells KCCI her church offered money to help with Martinez's legal bills and to take care of his three kids.

"It was a banner. How much does that hurt? But I had to reflect on the fear it created in our sanctuary."

ALERT: Security volunteers needed for Michigan!

ALERT: Security volunteers needed for Michigan! Oath Keepers, police and military veterans, bikers, three percenters, and other capable patriots, we need your help to protect Trump Supporters at the upcoming Trump Campaign Rally in Battle Creek, Michigan on Wednesday, December 18, 2019.   Oath Keepers will be there, along with our close allies, to once again do all we can to keep Trump supporters safe.  We have now deployed volunteer security escort teams to eight Trump rallies in a row – every Trump rally since the Rio Rancho, NM rally earlier this year.   Our most recent rally was the one in Hershey, PA on December 10, 2019.  We send our most experienced police and military veterans, as well as our EMTs and medics, and communications experts.  We work closely with patriot bikers, three percenters, and other patriotic groups to help keep people safe, especially after the rally lets out, when people have to walk back to their cars in the dark.   Because Trump rallies draw a crowd far in excess of the venue capacity (with a massive overflow crowd left outside, watching on a Jumbotron) there is never enough parking and rally attendees have to park far from the venue and walk in.  That makes them vulnerable to assault as they walk back to their vehicles in the dark. To volunteer, email us at:  oathkeepersok@gmail.com.  See below for details on what to submit with your application.   You DO NOT have to be an Oath Keepers member to volunteer!  Nor do you have to be prior service police or military.   You just need to be physically capable and cool-headed.  See below.   If you can’t make it yourself, please donate to support those who can make it in person, to be boots on the ground.   Our security volunteers need your support to do what they do.  Donations cover gas money, rooms, food, and essential equipment for our men.  Thank you! DONATE  EVENT SCHEDULE Wednesday, December 18, 2019 BATTLE CREEK, MI 07:00 pm (EST) Kellogg Arena 1 McCamly Square Battle Creek, MI 49017 Go here to reserve rally tickets (always a good idea, whether or not you plan on actually attending the rally). NOTE:  Even if you will be attending the rally, you are still welcome to join in on our volunteer security operation afterward.   Please still send in an email and go through the vetting process.   But let us know you will be attending the rally.   After the rally gets out is the critical time, and you can do a tremendous amount of good by jumping in once you exit the venue. HOW TO VOLUNTEER:   Please email us at: oathkeepersok@gmail.com Put “Battle Creek, MI Security Volunteer” in the subject line Please provide: a photo-copy of your drivers license Your home phone and/or cell phone number (needed to run the background check) A copy of your CCW if you have one (if you don’t, its OK). A brief summary of your relevant training and experience, whether formal or informal.   If you are prior service military, police, Fire, EMS, etc please detail your MOS/formal training and experience. NOTE:  You do NOT have to be prior-service to volunteer.   If you are not prior-service, you can still volunteer if you are physically capable of protecting others.   For example, in the past we have teamed up with awesome bikers from Bikers for Trump, Sons of Liberty Riders, and other bike clubs and associations.  We have also teamed up with three percenter groups, many of whom are not prior service, but who were very capable.  Oath Keepers will provide the highly trained and experienced police and military leadership for an effective combined-force element.  As always, our retired police officers will at as LEO liaisons to communicate and coordinate closely with the Secret Service and with all local, state, and federal LEOs to make sure they know who our leadership will be, how to reach them, where we will be, and how to identify our volunteers.  We do this to ensure we don’t get in their way, and to avoid any “blue on blue” incidents. Understand that our rules of engagement are to be “quiet professionals” who are NOT there to yell back at, argue with, or seek confrontation with protesters.  We are there to protect rally attendees and keep them safe, period.  Let the leftists scream and yell all they want- but don’t let them harm the people under your protection.  Keep your cool and focus on the mission.  A man who is not focused on the mission is a liability to the rest of the team.  Keep your head on a swivel, keep calm, but be prepared to act in defense of others.  Hot heads and big mouths need not apply or show up.  Leave that behavior to others who have far less discipline.   We conduct ourselves with military discipline and with the professionalism of experienced police officers.  We expect you to follow that example. If you are the leader of a motorcycle club, riders club, or associations, or a leader of a three percenters or other patriot group, please put “volunteer group LEADER” in the subject line.  Once we have vetted you and your group, we will trust you to vet your own men.  We did that in Rio-Rancho, NM, where we worked with the awesome bikers of Sons of Liberty Riders, and then Again in Lexington, KY where we teamed up with Kentucky IIIPercent (which sent us 23 volunteers!), and then again in Sunrise, FL, where we teamed up with APIII (American Patriot Three Percent), with excellent results.  When dealing with squared away groups, we trust their leaders to vet and lead their own teams, under our overall coordination.  We have done that many times, all over the nation, from downtown Berkeley, in April, 2017 on, and it works out very well. We specifically went up against organized masses of Antifa in Berkeley, CA (twice); Boston, MA; Washington, DC (three times); Portland, OR; Austin, TX; and at dozens of ACT for America March Against Sharia rallies across the nation, Our LEO veteran leaders, in particular, help to keep everything running smoothly while we strike the right balance between keeping rally attendees safe, while also not getting in the way of LEO operations. Oath Keepers military veterans and bikers from Sons of Liberty Riders teamed up successfully in Rio-Rancho, NM to keep people safe.   WHY WE DO THIS:  This will be the tenth Trump rally where Oath Keepers has provided volunteer security for rally attendees.  As always, we are confident that the interior of the venue itself in Battle Creek, MI will be safe (the Secret Service will see to that), but we have serious concerns for the safety of attendees as they walk from their vehicles to the venue, and then especially as they walk back to their vehicles in the dark afterward.  There have been numerous examples of Trump supporters being attacked by violent leftists under those circumstances, right up to recent Trump rallies, such as in Minneapolis, MN and Dallas, TX – yes, we had volunteer security teams on the ground at both of those rallies, and we successfully escorted many rally attendees and kept them safe, but we didn’t have enough men to cover all areas, and some Trump supporters were assaulted outside of our presence – including an Iraq veteran in Dallas who was hit from behind with a hard object and knocked unconscious as he walked alone back to his vehicle, which he had parked over a mile from the venue. Leftists have a right to protest, but they don’t have a right to shut down the free speech and assembly of other people by assaulting them because they don’t like their politics.  And yet that is the obvious, well-established pattern of behavior at nearly every Trump event, especially in or near major cities. We have a duty to protect our fellow Americans against such terrorism (and that’s exactly what it is), and we will. No American, of whatever political party, should have to worry about being violently assaulted as they attend a public political rally by thugs intent on suppressing their free speech and assembly through violent assault or attempted murder. Don’t take it for granted that this can’t or won’t also happen in Battle Creek, MI.  Unfortunately, it can happen anywhere.  Which is why we will continue to step up and provide security escorts, and why we need you to step up and help. All those we escorted at past rallies were kept 100% safe, but we need more volunteers at future rallies so we can have more effective coverage.  As in the past, this will be in independent volunteer security operation, on the exterior of the venue, and is not officially associated with the Trump campaign.  We do this because we are honor-bound to keep people safe, so they can exercise their right to free speech and assembly. Please help.  If you can, please volunteer, and if you can’t volunteer, please donate to support those who can. DONATE HERE Thank you for your support!  We can’t do it without you! For. the Republic, Stewart Rhodes Founder of Oath Keepers PS – When it comes to volunteers, our only bright line exclusions mirror our limits on who can be a member of Oath Keepers.   We cannot use  convicted felons, those who have been dishonorably discharged, anyone who advocates the overthrow of the U.S. government,  or people who are members of racially orientated groups, or who otherwise discriminate along racial lines.  That means no white nationalists or other “ethno-nationalists” or “identitarians” (of whatever race).  Such groups and people almost always hold the U.S. Constitution in utter contempt and desire to scrap it just as much as do the radical leftists of Antifa, and are therefore antithetical to our mission.   Racists are collectivists (judging people in groups instead of as individuals – again, just like the radical left).  We have no common cause with them and do not want them involved in anything we do. Likewise, we cannot and will not associate with groups who knowingly allow white nationalists into their ranks.  No exceptions.  On top of our serious moral and ideological differences with such people, we also have active duty military and law enforcement in our ranks who cannot associate with such groups or individuals. Oath Keepers is a strictly non-racially focused group. We are instead focused on liberty for all under the Constitution.  And finally, allowing white nationalists into any group that then attends a Trump rally to “protect” people does nothing but disservice to President Trump and the MAGA cause.  Keep that in mind. That SHOULD go without saying, but because of the ongoing attempts of white nationalists to worm their way into patriot/conservative/MAGA groups, we need to make our position clear.  It is not up for negotiation. NOTE:  If you are reading this, and consider yourself a “white identitarian” in “defensive” reaction to the racist identity politics of the left, we urge you to reconsider.  Two wrongs don’t make a right.  Identifying along racial lines will fragment the right, which contains millions of non-white patriots, mixed-race patriots, and patriots related to non-whites.  Adopting the same racist identity politics as the left only plays right into the hands of the radical Marxists and their globalist puppet masters, by giving credence to their smear that patriots are racist.  Your embracing identity politics only helps their intentional divide-and-conquer of the American people along racial lines and demonization of Western Civilization. In addition, to understand the fallacy of the assertion that race > culture> ideology, you only need to consider the millions of white Marxists on college campuses all over this nation and in major American cities, such as San Fransisco or Portland.   If race is most important, why are all those white Americans self-identified, proud “progressives” (Marxists)?   Clearly it’s because ideology trumps all else, when brainwashed into them by their teachers from grade-school on, but especially in college.  The same can be seen in Sweden, with white Swedes likewise indoctrinated with leftist ideology that is rooted in Marxist theory. Their “whiteness” didn’t prevent it.  Their skin color, culture, and history didn’t matter.  The ideology did.   The ideology trumped all. Like many other patriots, I wouldn’t want a million white leftist Swedes to immigrate here either, just like I don’t want millions of other foreigners who will not assimilate and won’t adopt our creed of individual liberty and limited government under the Constitution.   The average Swede is just as likely, or perhaps even more likely, to vote not just left, but far left.  Ideology and culture matter above all.  And when it comes to what is being done in our nation, it is the Marxist ideology that is clearly being used to poison American minds just as it has been used in Europe to destroy Western Civilization there. Identity politics, along with mass-immigration from the third world, IS a core strategy the globalists/Marxists have seized on to further their cause, but, ironically, their focus on race is a smokescreen.   What really matters to them most is ideology.  Consider how they treat conservative or libertarian blacks or Hispanics.  They are condemned as “race-traitors” and demonized/attacked with far more severity than white conservatives or libertarians.  For the left, race is NOT the dominant factor, despite how much they use it.  Ideology is the real dominant factor for them, with culture a close second, and race actually dead last.  It needs to be likewise for you, or you will only fragment your own ideological allies on the right and will aid our enemies in destroying this nation.