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On 15 June 2017, a post circulate claiming via social media asserting that police officer Crystal Griner (who had been wounded during the shooting of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise one day earlier) was a lesbian, and she risked her life to save a man who was opposed to her own marriage: The post maintained that Griner (a lesbian) saved Scalise (an opponent of LGBT rights), and ended with a that's right, haters message. Although elements of the post are accurate, on the whole it left out a lot of context and a complex backstory involving Griner, Bailey, their jobs, and the shooting incident. It is true that Griner is married to another woman, an incidental detail reported by gay publication Washington Blade: Furthermore, both Griner and Bailey are black, and in the days after the shooting a quote attributed to Scalise describing himself as David Duke without the baggage re-entered the news cycle. Although that quote, too, was often presented in a facile manner, Scalise had come under fire for his purported links to white supremacist groups: Griner and Bailey were rightly hailed for averting what could have been a massacre, nut the pair were not merely responding officers acting in a moment of spontaneity; they were specifically assigned to protect Scalise as part of his security detail: Had Scalise not been present at the early-morning practice, neither Griner and Bailey would have been on the scene to intervene: Despite Rep. Scalise's reported proximity to white supremacists during his political career (Scalise clarified that he disavowed any such ideology in 2014), friends said Bailey was devoted to his duty of protecting Scalise:
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