2015 was the year of marriage equality, a goal that brought together gays and lesbians from across the political spectrum. 2016 and beyond is likely to see a continuing divergence among collectivist progressives, live-and-let live moderates, and individual-rights libertarians.
In the presidential election, the GOP looks unlikely to nominate one of the candidates who can bring the party into the 21st century on LGBT issues. Whether limited-government gay voters pull the lever for Hillary, sit the election out, vote Libertarian, or go with the Republican nominee will depend on how bad the GOP candidate is on social issues, and how bad Hillary is on economic/government overreach and over-regulation. The result (most likely a Clinton presidency) isn’t likely to be good for the country.
The institutional LGBT advocacy establishment will push for The Equality Act, which will go nowhere. The act would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and expand that act’s definition of public accommodations to cover “any establishment that provides a good, service, or program” including “an individual…who is a provider of a good, service, or program.” Take, that, wedding planners, caterers and photographers!
Religious exceptions under The Equality Act would be limited to houses of worship, and perhaps only to ministerial positions, and the measure explicitly sidelines attempts to claim religious liberty rights by legislating that “The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 shall not provide a claim concerning, or a defense to a claim under, a covered title, or provide a basis for challenging the application or enforcement of a covered title.”
The Equity Act demonstrates that LGBT activists are no longer interested in any kind of a reasonable workplace anti-discrimination bill that might obtain the support of moderate conservatives and libertarians.
Transgender issues will continue to dominate LGBT discourse. There will be greater acceptance of transgender people as part of a diverse society, but if compromise is rejected over the issue of public restrooms and, especially, gender-discordant nudity in locker rooms, expect to see more backlash. Progressives will be mystified by this.
Political correctness, with all its authoritarian-left overtones, will continue to be the dogma coming out of the progressive universities and the liberal media establishment, and it will persist in producing push-back among many Americans who value freedom of speech and freedom of religion, including the right of citizens not be to compelled by the state to engage in expressive activity that violates religious belief. Progressives will continue to be contemptuous of such intransigence.
47 Comments for “The New Year and Beyond”
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I suspect that the LGBT movement will find common ground, despite differences, if Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, both of whom have promised to see to it that Obergefell is reversed if elected, is elected President. We stand to lose the gains we’ve made over the last decade, and that will ignite and energize gays and lesbians.
posted by Jorge on
2016 and beyond is likely to see a continuing divergence among collectivist progressives, live-and-let live moderates, and individual-rights libertarians.
Trump 2016: The Revenge.
posted by Houndentenor on
>>>collectivist progressives, live-and-let live moderates, and individual-rights libertarians.
And what of the 90+% of Americans that don’t fit into any of those categories?
posted by Jorge on
They’ll all vote to ban gay marriage by constitutional amendment, dooming the nation. Come on, it’s more like 40%. Mr. Miller is simply attaching a pejorative term to progressives, moderates, and libertarians.
Trump 2016: The Revenge will shatter the earth, frustrating both collectivist progressives (“I am breastfeeding, you must accommodate me”) and individual rights libertarians (“I am breastfeeding, do not punish me”) as live-and-let live moderates (“I am breastfeeding”) flock to his side, and peeling off just a little bit of support from each.
posted by Houndentenor on
That was hilarious. I wonder what parallel universe Stephen lives in. Which of the 16 or so GOP candidates would be at least moderate on lbgt issues if elected. Any of them? And of them only Rand Paul is remotely libertarian (I’ll leave that subject to our resident libertarian for more complete analysis). None of the others is for a smaller government, just a different kind of big government. Anyone who thinks the Republicans are for smaller government hasn’t been paying attention for the last 35 years. No Republican in my lifetime has reduced the size of government. Actually every one of them has increased it. I am concerned that Stephen has now completely lost touch with reality.
posted by Jorge on
None of the others is for a smaller government, just a different kind of big government.
*Cheers*
No Republican in my lifetime has reduced the size of government.
Rebuttal: Bobby Jindall.
Actually every one of them has increased it.
Explanation: Bobby Jindall.
posted by Houndentenor on
That’s what Jindal claims, but it is true? Not really.
http://www.baynews9.com/content/news/baynews9/news/article.html/content/news/articles/bn9/2015/10/12/politifact_jindal_sa.html
He’s also running huge deficits just like Walker and the other teaparty type governors. Not exactly what any rational person would consider “fiscal responsibility.”
posted by Jorge on
That’s what Jindal claims, but it is true? Not really.
Well then it seems to me that there’s no reason to complain about him.
Politifact rated his claim as half-true. Therefore I must rate your claim as false.
posted by Houndentenor on
A half truth is still a falsehood.
posted by Jorge on
No. It’s not. Click the link on the secondhand article you posted and read the Politifact article from beginning to end.
posted by JohnInCA on
Um, Jindal didn’t shrink the size of government in his state. He happened to be serving at the same time as the Katrina funds expired, but that’s the lion’s share of any “shrinking” going on.
Throw in the run-around semantics game he pulled to have his tax increase labeled as tax-neutral by Grover Norquist, and calling him “fiscally responsible” seems kind of shaky.
posted by Lori Heine on
Am I the resident libertarian? How nice. I want a pleasant little cabin by a wooded lake.
No, seriously, that anyone might consider Rand Paul libertarian is giggled at by libertarians. The capital-L people like him so well that they’re going to nominate someone else (probably Feldman or Johnson, though McAfee, the founder of the antivirus software giant, is also considering a run).
My personal opinion of Rand is that at least on one matter, Trump is right. The man is truly weird.
posted by Jorge on
though McAfee, the founder of the antivirus software giant, is also considering a run
Isn’t he a recluse in some Central American country who got investigated for something strange a couple of years ago?
posted by Lori Heine on
Yes, he’s the same person. Lots of strange characters like to run for president, it seems.
posted by Houndentenor on
Sorry if that came off snarky. I didn’t mean it that way. I was just deferring to a more expert opinion.
posted by Houndentenor on
Pardon the OT-ness but that made me think of Mahler’s “work cabin” from which he composed his 2nd symphony and part of the 3rd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steinbach_am_Attersee#/media/File:Mahlers_Komponierh%C3%A4uschen.jpg
posted by Lori Heine on
I would really like to have one of those! Except being a native of Phoenix, it would probably need to be a beach house in a tropical climate. Any time the temperature dips down under sixty, I’m freezing.
posted by Wilberforce on
Stephen hasn’t lost touch with reality. The general public have, being hypnotized by the smaller gubment echo chamber of mainstream media. Stephen is just repeating the chorus as all good republicans do. And the public are dumb enough that it has every chance of working for another 35 years.
posted by Dale of the Desert on
Stephen, can you be a little more specific about how marriage equality brought the entire gay political spectrum together last year? How did that work? What role did the gay political right play in that confluent effort? What role did you personally play in that effort? How did you like working alongside gay people with political perspectives different from your own? Did it make you feel like, hey, this really is the land of the free and the home of the brave, and if we all worked together once we can do it again? God, I get all goose-bumpy just thinking about how long and hard you worked for that goal.
And while you’re at it, by referring to economic/government “overreach” and “over-regulation,” you’ve made it implicit that there must be a level of “appropriate reach” and “appropriate regulation.” And that in turn implies that there also must be levels of “under-reach” and “under-regulation.” So just so we’re all on the same page, can you define the lines of division between each of those levels?
Thanks.
posted by JohnInCA on
“[…] 2016 and beyond is likely to see a continuing divergence among collectivist progressives, live-and-let live moderates, and individual-rights libertarians”
Continuing divergence? Dude, the described moderates and libertarians diverged a long time ago. Mainly because few of them have ever hesitated to vote for social conservatives. Sure, at the dinner table they’ll be all “yeah, gay marriage! Yeah, down with DADT!” and so-on. But then they refused to ever punish their candidates for voting against what they’ve claimed they’re for.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Continuing divergence? Dude, the described moderates and libertarians diverged a long time ago. Mainly because few of them have ever hesitated to vote for social conservatives. Sure, at the dinner table they’ll be all “yeah, gay marriage! Yeah, down with DADT!” and so-on. But then they refused to ever punish their candidates for voting against what they’ve claimed they’re for.
Exactly.
I’m just waiting, quietly, to see how LCR dresses up its endorsement of Cruz or Rubio this fall.
posted by Tom Jefferson 3rd on
What? You don’t expect Trump to win the nomination?
posted by Tom Scharbach on
What? You don’t expect Trump to win the nomination?
I don’t, but if Trump is the nominee, LCR won’t have to turn themselves inside out finding positive things to say about him. Trump is, I think, least anti-equality of all the Republican candidates. Trump has made no noises at all about overturning Obergefell (a loudly proclaimed objective for both Cruz and Rubio) and supports the Equality Act of 2015.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Link for “Exactly” in the earlier comment. Just who do these supposedly pro-equality Republicans think they are fooling? Themselves, mostly.
posted by Mike in Houston on
That would be Jorge & Stephen.
posted by Jorge on
I assume you have a long list of disappointments and failed gambits you can throw in my face?
No? Then study harder.
posted by Jorge on
The question for him and other likeminded conservative donors is, even as they begin pouring more money into advancing LGBT nondiscrimination protections across the country, at what point will they actually prioritize such rights with their candidates? Because, as LGBT author and activist Mike Signorile…
I can ignore the fact that your source is DailyKos, but as far as I’m concerned Mike Signorile is an auto-fail on all questions of political morality as far as I’m concerned. It is without very good cause if the moderates and libertarians diverged from the progressives, and he was in the thick of it.
What pro-LGBT Democratic donors eventually found is that, at some point, you have take a stand—your candidates have to understand that you’ll cut them off at the knees if they profess one thing behind closed doors but say and do another publicly.
In biology, it sometimes occurs that two queen ants will share the same nest, so they can produce more worker and warrior ants to defeat competing ant-holes. Then the two queens have a final showdown. It still increases survival chances for each of them.
The real question for gay donors is not when do you fight your co-regent. Of course your enemies want you to fight now, that increases their chances of survival at the expense of your own. The question is with which queen do you have the greatest chance at survival.
I will always side with any queen Signorile is against, for he has always sided against me, and with far more dangerous intent than most of my enemies. It is not unreasonable to suppose that other lonesome queens perceive their own enemies to be defeated at all costs, too.
posted by Jorge on
It is without very good cause if the moderates and libertarians diverged from the progressives…
>>It is *not* without very good cause…
posted by Tom Jefferson 3rd on
Correct me if I am wrong. But wasn’t the last Clinton administration around during a time of a great economic boom……
I am not saying it was all good, but this idea that “a Clinton is bad for the economy”, just seems a bit more partisan, than ……..what’s the word? INDEPENDENT
posted by Kosh III on
“Political correctness, with all its authoritarian-left overtones, will continue to be the dogma coming out of the progressive”
Yes please. Don’t be shy righties.
Call him the “uppity nigger in the White house” you know you want to. Call her “Hitlery” and Bernie a “commie kike.” Long live wetbacks, beaners, dago, jungle bunny, etc.
Rejoice in your freedom to be a turd towards other citizens. Murrika! luv it or leaf it. Bombbombbomb!
posted by Houndentenor on
Do you not know any right-wingers in real life because I heard people say those very things over the holidays?
posted by Kosh III on
Are you kidding? I hear that sort of offensive language from folks here in the home of the Southern Bigot Convention and avowed “conservatives” and Teavangelists.
posted by Tom Jefferson 3rd on
Sadly, I hear quite similar comments from folks in the Midwest, especially when they think that everyone involved with the conversation will laugh or agree with them.
posted by Jorge on
I must be living in an ivory tower. The only people I ever hear say the n-word are black people.
Constantly.
posted by Kosh III on
Get out of your comfy blue world and spend some time in the conservative paradise you desire: Alabama, Arkansas, Texas, etc. Of course with a name like Jorge, you’ll probably be shunned as one of Trump’s rapist Mexicans.
posted by Jorge on
I’ve been to Texas–four cities total. And Ar…izona. Georgia was the most fun. DC was by far the most dangerous. South Carolina is next.
I find your presumption amusing. I want to be shunned. My experience is that people act friendlier when they “notice” me, and I tend to find it annoying. More annoying than your kind of patronizing and bigoted attitude, though about five times less common.
The main thing I concern myself with in any social situation (especially when traveling) is whether I am likely to be robbed or otherwise attacked. That requires being noticed by a force that is more dangerous than I am, and since that’s about every male between the ages of 16 and 45, I do not like being spoken to when I am traveling. It is for that reason that I tend to avoid non-cities like the plague. I’d get hopelessly lost anywhere else, and more to the point, I have no idea how to intimidate rural thugs.
However, when it comes to anti-gay attitudes, the gamble that I will make (and I will make it) is that as an obvious out-of-towner I have a “diplomatic immunity” that I do not have in my own hometown (this also applies racially–there is no demographic I am more worried about as a gay man than other Hispanics). The reason being it’s easier to intimidate tourists into retreating than locals.
posted by Houndentenor on
You’ve been to four CITIES in Texas? The cities are all blue (except for Ft Worth). You did not go to Texas. You visited liberal islands located in the middle of Texas. Try again and this time go into deep Teabagistan.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I must be living in an ivory tower. The only people I ever hear say the n-word are black people.
That, or among people who don’t use the word because of social environment in which you live and work. As I recall, you live in NYC and do some kind of social work, a work environment which is unlikely to tolerate overt race-bashing.
In rural Wisconsin, I don’t hear “nigger” all that much — maybe two or three times a month. I hear “coon” a lot, “spade” frequently, “monkey” occassionally.
Of course, raw descriptors are often masked (for political correctness, no doubt) by code words, as our Governor’s 2012 recall campaign slogan “We don’t want Wisconsin to become like Milwaukee.” Milwaukee is home to 70% of the African-Americans living in Wisconsin, and in Wisconsin politics, “Milwaukee” is often code for “black people.”
Keep your ears open, and get out among folks in “Real America” (Sarah Palin’s famous reference to white rural and suburban areas) . You’ll hear your share.
posted by Jorge on
That, or among people who don’t use the word because of social environment in which you live and work.
I live in a mostly black neighborhood and work in a mostly black workplace. It is true that the only slur I ever hear is the anti-gay f-word (never at work).
Of course, raw descriptors are often masked (for political correctness, no doubt) by code words, as our Governor’s 2012 recall campaign slogan “We don’t want Wisconsin to become like Milwaukee.” Milwaukee is home to 70% of the African-Americans living in Wisconsin, and in Wisconsin politics, “Milwaukee” is often code for “black people.”
And “black people” is a stand in for crime or some other socially undesirable condition, I take it, or is that too blue an interpretation?
Lots of people make horrid off-color jokes and statements, and everyone thinks only their own jargon is acceptable. I would be willing to bet most of the people you referenced would deny they’re racist, “but…” And that the rest would say something like, “Yes, I’m a racist, now get over it.” In NYC I think more people would be in complete denial that they are racist.
posted by Jorge on
Wellanyway, last year’s rise of Donald Trump certainly was interesting in regards to race.
He actually got black pastors to meet with him. I would hope to see less “code” and more problem solving as a result, but I still have a brain.
posted by Tom Jefferson 3rd on
Jorge, Seek help, now.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Tom: Of course, raw descriptors are often masked (for political correctness, no doubt) by code words, as our Governor’s 2012 recall campaign slogan “We don’t want Wisconsin to become like Milwaukee.” Milwaukee is home to 70% of the African-Americans living in Wisconsin, and in Wisconsin politics, “Milwaukee” is often code for “black people.”
Jorge: And “black people” is a stand in for crime or some other socially undesirable condition, I take it, or is that too blue an interpretation?
I don’t know about “blue” or “red”, but in rural Wisconsin, at least, “black people” tends to subsume the racial stereotypes: lazy, stupid, shiftless, welfare con artists, criminal, over sexed, smelly, drug addicts, and so on.
“Milwaukee” is code. Wisconsin had few blacks until the 1950’s and 1960’s when the “second migration” brought an influx. That’s when it started — fear, white flight and so on. Our Governor went out of his way to portray Milwaukee as a cesspool of crime, filth and decay, and folks knew that he wasn’t talking about the German and Polish neighborhoods.
It isn’t just blacks, of course. Rural Wisconsin has a relatively large and growing Hispanic population — legal for the most part — because farm worker are needed. I hear a lot about them, too, but it is more localized. Mexican restaurants are talked about as drug and money laundering fronts, hangouts for drunks and criminals, and all the usual stereotypes.
Circumstances change. When I was young, Native Americans were the bottom of the shit pile, often referred to as “woods niggers”. Now that the NA nations are going middle class because of the casino money, NA’s are no longer unemployable, but envied because they get a per-cap from the casinos, have jobs, decent housing and nation-sponsored medical and dental care. Now it is all about resentment.
posted by Houndentenor on
Then you do live in an ivory tower because I hear it quite often, though admittedly only from older white people. I never heard it in NYC but here in Texas, yep, I hear it far too often.
posted by Jorge on
I never heard it in NYC but…
Really?
posted by Houndentenor on
Not on Wall Street or in the rehearsal halls at the State Theater or Avery Fisher Hall. No. We obviously operated in different NYC circles.
posted by Tom Jefferson 3rd on
LGBT civil rights laws, like this, will not go anywhere at the federal level, mainly because elected officials in key States and Congressional districts view such legislation as a political liability.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
The Equality Act will probably not go anywhere until public attitudes change in key States and Congressional districts. To do that, the national LGBT organizations would have to be willing to dump a significant amount of resources (over a long period of time) in a lot of rural, small town and even suburban/bedroom communities.
Frankly, I do not see the Human Rights Campaign or the National Log Cabin Republicans making that sort of substantial, long-term commitment. The HRC has — to its credit — periodically tried to do something like that (on a small scale) in the South.