Martha-Ann Alito echos extremists who engage in violence

She's condemned the Pride flag, which some Republicans recently ordered burned, while she and Justice Alito have flown the symbols of the insurrectionists who bludgeoned police officers.

The wife of a Supreme Court justice, smack in the middle of LGBTQ Pride month, has been caught on tape expressing her revulsion at having to see a Pride flag waving in the distance outside her window.

This comes a week after the MAGA-dominated Colorado Republican Party sent out an outrageous social media post in which it called for the burning of “all pride flags”—commanding MAGA followers to engage in vandalism and violence—and, in an email, grotesquely charactered LGBTQ people as “the godless groomers in our society [who] want to attack what is decent, holy, and righteous so they can ultimately harm our children.”

The Colorado GOP chairman, Dave Williams, responded to criticism by saying, “We make no apologies for saying God hates pride or pride flags.”

And it comes almost a year after a radicalized Christian nationalist terrorist shot and killed a California shop owner who proudly flew a Pride flag on her store in Cedar Glen. Travis Ikeguchi, an extremist who trafficked in Christian nationalist hate on social media, murdered Laura Ann Carleton in front of the store after he made "several disparaging remarks about a rainbow flag," according to the San Bernadino County sheriff’s deputies.

Martha-Ann Alito echoed the same kind of religion-based hostility toward the rainbow flag, recorded secretly by undercover journalist Lauren Windsor, at an event of the Supreme Court Historical Society, and shared by Windsor on social media yesterday.

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Believing she was speaking with a fellow Christian nationalist, Alito said, “I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month."

Alito shares the hostility toward the rainbow flag of those who engage in vandalism and violence against Pride flags. Why would it bother you if a Pride flag were flying in the distance, after all, unless you detest with every fiber of your being what the flag represents?

Her husband, Justice Alito, has also exhibited that hostility, most notably in his written opinions. More than that, having flown an upside-down flag on their lawn, a symbol of the “Stop the Steal” movement, and having flown the Appeal to Heaven flag on their beach house—a flag adopted by Christian nationalists within the “Stop the Steal” movement—both Alitos have expressed solidarity with those who engaged in a violent attack on our Capitol in which police officers were bludgeoned.

And now, Martha-Ann Alito’s comments on the Pride flag are public. Unless she makes a statement—which we can be sure she won’t—condemning any vandalism and violence, she is emboldening vandalism and violence, which is occurring every day.

Just in the past few days, Pride flags and displays have been attacked all over the country.

In Burien, Washington, 80 Pride flags were ripped down from street displays following Pride signs being slashed earlier in the month in Poulsbo, Washington. The Pride flag at the LGBT center in Exeter County, Pennsylvania, was vandalized yesterday. Two Pride signs were vandalized in East Hampton, New York, yesterday as well. In Newberg, Oregon, a teenager was arrested after shooting at a window at a local library which had a pride flag display.

I could go on and on. Again, that’s just the past few days.

These attacks have escalated over several years. Pride flags and displays have been vandalized at stores like Target and Walmart, and flags have been ripped down, torn, or burned on public buildings and even at private residences by MAGA extremists, as I wrote in 2021.

The fact that the wife of a Supreme Court justice echoes the hatred of these extremists—in addition to vowing revenge against those who criticized her and her husband for the upside-down flag—is alarming. And make no mistake, it is hatred harbored by the Alitos born out of Christian extremism, as evidenced not just by their flying the Appeal to Heaven flag; at the same event in which Martha-Ann Alito was secretly recorded, Justice Alito, also secretly recorded by Windsor, agreed that the country needed to get back to “godliness.”

Windsor: I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end. I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning.

Alito: I think you’re probably right. On one side or the other, one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know. I mean, there can be a way of working—a way of living together peacefully—but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.

Windsor: People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that—to return our country to a place of godliness.

Alito: I agree with you. I agree.

The LGBTQ community is under brutal assault led by a Republican Party promoting vandalism and violence and by a GOP presidential candidate, Donald Trump, who’s already stripped LGBTQ rights and is intent on making us second-class citizens in a new administration, all of which is clear in the details of Project 2025, which he and those connected to him embrace.

Meanwhile, on the Supreme Court, one of Trump’s staunchest defenders has not only given him and his Christian nationalist backers carte blanche to strip those rights—allowing discrimination against LGBTQ people—but has now revealed it’s about his devotion to a Christian nationalist movement. And his wife has revealed she is revolted by a symbol of equality—a revulsion she echoes that is expressed by those who engage in vandalism and murder.