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 Copeland told that outlet that he started roleplaying at a young age to relieve stress and asked that pictures of him not be published.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. [MUSIC]