Nov 8, 2023
Alabama Mayor Outed In Targeted Cross-Dressing Blow, Dies By Suicide
Alabama Mayor and pastor in Smiths Station town, Bubba Copeland, is targeted by 1819 News blog for cross-dressing and posting fiction in his private life and dies by suicide after backlash following blog story releases. Jayar Jackson and Trae Crowder break it down on The Damage Report.
- 6 minutes
I apologize for any embarrassment
caused by my private personal life.
I have nothing to be ashamed of,
a lot of things that were said
were taken out of context.
>> Speaker 2: That was Bubba Copeland,
[00:00:16]
that was his last sermon to his
congregation and apologies for
his personal life that has
since come to surface.
And a few days later he
ended had his life there.
So after he was exposed for
having an alternate identity online where
[00:00:31]
he would dress in women's clothing and
have a different identity name and
enjoyed himself, lived his actual life for
a bit and after that then came forward,
he couldn't take I guess the embarrassment
and the ridicule that was coming his way.
[00:00:47]
So let's go to details of what
is that happened afterwards.
His death came two days after
the publication 1819 news.
They published an article
about his secret life.
That's despite him asking them not to for
the sake of his family and
his role as a pastor at a church in
Phoenix City, which by the way also this
[00:01:06]
small town that he was the mayor of,
Smith Station, Alabama.
He's also was well known and
liked apparently in the community
a little bit more, though.
Copeland told that outlet that he started
roleplaying at a young age to relieve
stress and asked that pictures
of him not be published.
After those photos were
posted to the website,
[00:01:23]
Copeland apologized to his congregation,
as we saw there for
any embarrassment that his private and
personal life caused them.
That right wing outlet, which is edited
by Breitbert contributor Jeff Poor,
they published an initial story last
Wednesday showing social media accounts
operated by Copeland in which he
identified as a transgender woman and
[00:01:41]
shared images of himself
in women's underwear.
The outlet published another
story on the day of his death,
alleging that he wrote violent fiction and
posted photographs online of people in
his local community without their consent,
pause.
So we're gonna get the details of that,
things he wrote and
[00:01:56]
all that in the back end.
Hopefully we can get to this really fast.
But first off, on the front end of
this here at the day of his death,
the response is well,
look what else he did.
Let's go into detail of what else he did
but is it basically celebrating his death?
We'll see a little bit more.
[00:02:11]
Phoenix City School Superintendent Larry
DiChiara told NBC News Monday that he
decided to get in touch with Copeland
after seeing people just relentlessly
attacking him after that,
1819 news started publishing its pieces.
Authorities say a welfare check was called
into the sheriff's office on Friday and
[00:02:28]
two deputies found him
driving on a country road.
The deputies tried to get him to pull over
around ten minutes before Copeland got out
of his car and
took his own life in front of them.
He added that law enforcement had
no idea Copeland would do that.
It's just tragic all the way around,
more of what some of those folks said.
[00:02:45]
So again, this is a Republican down,
Alabama mayor of this city,
pastor of a church,
preaching to his congregation.
So you can imagine what maybe his
politics were is what they were.
In April of 2022, the same month that
Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed into
law a bill barring schoolchildren from
using bathrooms consistent with their
[00:03:02]
gender identity,
Copeland endorsed Ivey's reelection.
In campaign literature during
his own reelection in 2020,
Copeland used a photo of himself
with Donald Trump, with the then
president visiting Alabama after
a series of deadly tornadoes in 2019.
And Copeland never openly criticized his
state's Republican led legislative assault
[00:03:20]
on trans rights, such as making it
a felony for doctors to give people under
the age of 19 gender affirming care and
passing Alabama's own version of Florida's
don't say gay law, which forbade classroom
discussions of sexual orientation or
gender identity with students
in the fifth grade and under.
[00:03:38]
So people were upset about
this whole thing as well,
we don't have to get to their
comments there on the front end.
But that's where I think we see a little
bit of this collision of logic here,
at least specifically with Bubba Copeland,
because he support all the things that
went against who he is or was and other
folks that struggle with this as well,
[00:03:56]
which is where maybe
some of the ridicule and
condemnation came from once
all this came forward.
But then once he ends his life,
the sympathy just didn't seem really
be there from those same folks.
First thoughts here, Trey,
before we get to more.
>> Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, like you said
at the end there, that's the part that
[00:04:11]
this dude was a pillar of his community
in a small town for a long time.
I'm from a small town,
I know how that works.
I guarantee you as much beloved
reportedly and everything,
and then as soon as all
this stuff comes out,
everything else he'd ever done his whole
life didn't matter to these people.
They turned on him in a heartbeat
that bullied him into
literally killing himself.
[00:04:26]
And I guarantee you most of them
probably have no remorse over it.
They're just probably saying that it's
a shame he lost his battle with the devil.
The devil clearly got to him and
ended up winning out in the end.
It's like, no,
it wasn't the devil, it was y'all.
It was y'all and your draconian and
[00:04:42]
needlessly hateful ideology that
forced this guy to do this in the end.
None of this needed or
had to have happened.
It's just because of the outmoded
philosophies that they still enact
down there, the type of stuff that
drove me crazy my whole life.
[00:05:00]
So I do feel bad for him.
And then as far, I don't know, maybe the
other stuff they said, maybe it was bad.
We don't have the full context.
But like I said, he writes violent
fiction, I write violent fiction.
I've written scripts with people getting
shot and stuff in it, who cares?
And number two, they posted pictures
online of people without their permission,
[00:05:18]
that's pretty broad, too.
I was just at a NASCAr race on Sunday,
and I took a picture of my view, and
I realized after I posted to my Twitter
here with all my followers and stuff,
you could see like eight or
nine other people in it.
And in my head, I was like, should I
not have done that, is that not cool?
I didn't get these people that
can mean a lot of things, but
[00:05:34]
they do this all the time.
Just trying to paint him in the worst
light possible to sort of, I guess,
justify the fact that it's okay that
he killed himself because he was
a secret queer person or
whatever, I don't know.
>> Speaker 2: And this is the thing,
[00:05:50]
maybe you have issues with the way
he supported me, the folks and
laws that went against folks rights
that he could probably relate to.
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