It’s been embarrassing to witness the online hysteria and public angst exhibited by an astounding number of gays and lesbians in the wake of the election. Social media postings intone epithets like “racist,” “fascist” and “Nazi” to describe the president-elect and his supporters. These inflammatory remarks have become the angry post-defeat version of Clinton’s mocking campaign denunciation – now sweet sounding by comparison – that those not supporting her included both the “deplorable” and “irredeemable.” …
The question for LGBT voters is why some so eagerly align with and defend a political party so disconnected from those we most want to persuade as to be of nominal value to converting recalcitrant hearts and minds.
Continuing from the blog post below, I’ll reference another Conor Friedersdorf post-election article, How Stigma Sows Seeds of Its Own Defeat, in which Friedersdorf writes:
Today, pioneering gay-marriage proponents like Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch express dismay that, after majorities came to embrace their position, the coalition that used persuasion to accomplish one of the great civil rights expansions of the 21st century shifted from a posture of persuasion to a posture of stigmatization. …
I wonder if today’s students are as well-equipped as older cohorts to persuasively articulate why racism or sexism or denial of equal rights to gays and lesbians is wrong, let alone to explain the value of other aspects of the liberal project on which they’ve never focused, having never lived when they were seriously threatened. …
Americans need to avoid leaning on stigma even when it seems both solid and warranted. Insofar as a position is worth defending, it is worth defending on its merits.
Unfortunately, the whole progressive project of “political correctness” is based on stigmatizing and silencing those with “incorrect” views, despite (as Friedersdorf points out) its failure as a political tactic.
More. Writing recently in the Boston Globe, Clinton campaign volunteer Diane Hessan recounts:
Last week, I reread all of my notes. There was one moment when I saw more undecided voters shift to Trump than any other, when it all changed, when voters began to speak differently about their choice. It wasn’t FBI Director James Comey, Part One or Part Two; it wasn’t Benghazi or the e-mails or Bill Clinton’s visit with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on the tarmac. No, the conversation shifted the most during the weekend of Sept. 9, after Clinton said, “You can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.”
All hell broke loose.
George [a source in northeastern Pennsylvania] told me that his neighborhood was outraged, that many of his hard-working, church-going, family-loving friends resented being called that name. He told me that he looked up the word in the dictionary, and that it meant something so bad that there is no hope, like the aftermath of a tsunami. You know, he said, Clinton ended up being the biggest bully of them all. Whereas Trump bullied her, she bullied Wilkes Barre.
Let’s recall that Clinton’s remarks were made at an LGBT fundraising in NYC featuring Barbra Streisand, with ticket prices ranging from $1,200 to $250,000, and many paying $50,000, according to reports. And that those wealthy LGBT donors enthusiastically applauded Clinton’s calling millions of Americans “deplorables” who are “irredeemable.”
Furthermore. Nothing learned. Via the front page of the Washington Blade: Trump’s deplorable cabinet picks.
24 Comments for “LGBT Partisan Tribalism (and the Failed Tactic of Stigmatizing ‘Incorrect’ ideas)”
posted by Doug on
“Social media postings intone epithets like “racist,” “fascist” and “Nazi”. . . ”
Well Trump was endorsed by the KKK and almost every other white supremacy group. They must have seen something they liked, and there is apparently only one common denominator.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Odd. I’ve occasionally been embarrassed by my own behavior, but never by others’ behavior. I wonder why Mark Lee, who is a homocon and Trump supporter, is embarrassed by the behavior of hysterics on the left. Doesn’t make a lot of sense.
posted by TJ on
Candidate Trump was endorsed by white supremacist groups, and had been courting their support. Pointing this out, ain’t hysterics or partisan politics.
I get why a Republican loyalist is trying to whitewash reality, but it’s odd that Stephen (who voted for the libertarian) is eager to dip into the lemmings spin zone.
As to why gay Americans (based on imperfect data) tend to vote for the major party that tends to believe in freedom and equality……what does the GOP offet?
Well, its social policy is still run by people who think that the Spanish Inquistion was just tough love.
Its economic policy is either run by Trump’s alt-right populism or people who worship Ayn Rand.
posted by TJ on
I suspect that the last minute, fake FBI investigation doomed Hillary with swing voters in key states. She lost by a few points in key states.
It was not some huge ideological shift among the electorate.
That might have been the case if Trump had a larger victory (or had beaten Bernie Sanders).
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Most preposterous have been the doomsday claims that same-sex marriages are vulnerable to nullification and the ability to marry at risk …
Conservative Christian legal firms argue that a clear path to overturning Obergefell, and if the Court is dominated by originalists in the mold of Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito, Obergefell could be reversed within a decade.
The path, in general terms, is this: Attack Roe and the Griswold (penumbra of the 9th Amendment) case line on which Roe is based. If successful, attack Lawrence on the grounds that without the Griswold line, Lawrence must logically fall. If successful, attack either (a) the Zablocki (marriage as a constitutional right) line, and/or (b) the Loving (moral approbation in not grounds for denying equal protection) line (see Lawrence dissent, Scalia). If successful, attack Obergefell.
The conservative argument against this thinking comes down to the meme that the Court has never reversed a case that increased civil rights. I would gently remind them that Employment Division (Scalia) de facto reversed part of Sherbert, returning free exercise rights to the Reynolds test when laws of general application were applicable.
Characterized by vitriol, name-calling, insult hurling, demeaning social and economic class ridicule and blatant blanket expressions of hatred, this hissy-fit reaction quickly devolved to a temper tantrum replete with conspiracy theories of a rigged election.
I couldn’t more accurately characterize the President-Elect’s campaign rally tantrumsand campaign Tweetstorms if I tried.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I wonder if today’s students are as well-equipped as older cohorts to persuasively articulate why racism or sexism or denial of equal rights to gays and lesbians is wrong …
I don’t know, but I doubt it.
Today’s college students were born long after the worst overt government suppression was fought to a standstill in the 1970’s and 1980’s, long after the AIDS crisis consolidated large numbers of gays and lesbians into common cause, know little or nothing about the days when gays and lesbians were routinely kicked out of college, the military, and government service, have little appreciation of what it means to live in the closet, and were children during the anti-marriage amendment fights of the last decade of the 20th Century.
Having not lived through it, the most that today’s college students can hope for is theoretical knowledge of what we fought and the risk we took to fight, much as whites can understand struggle of African-Americans only theoretically, and similar to the ways in which combat veterans find it impossible to explain their experience to others.
Unfortunately, the whole progressive project of “political correctness” is based on stigmatizing and silencing those with “incorrect” views, despite (as Friedersdorf points out) its failure as a political tactic.
And what of conservative “political correctness”? It is at least as prevalent, and as harmful.
But that’s the way it is. The beneficiaries of the struggle haven’t lived the struggle.
And although I get frustrated from time to time with youngsters who take the relatively benign world in which we now live for granted, at another level I’m glad to see them do so. After all, that’s what we fought for, is it not? I won’t live to see it, but I hope for the day when a gay high school kid is just another high school kid.
posted by Jorge on
“Today, pioneering gay-marriage proponents like Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch express dismay that, after majorities came to embrace their position, the coalition that used persuasion to accomplish one of the great civil rights expansions of the 21st century shifted from a posture of persuasion to a posture of stigmatization.”
What did you expect after VICTORY? That the flower-sniffers would sing and dance with the GayTMs?
By the way, I love how this author uses among the most posh and refined writing and reasoning I’ve ever seen to argue against the arrogance of the posh and refined. Of course *I* do! I love his analysis at how the conservatives lost the majority on gay marriage.
posted by Jorge on
Candidate Trump was endorsed by white supremacist groups, and had been courting their support. Pointing this out, ain’t hysterics or partisan politics.
The most charitable thing I can say for Trump here is that he courted the votes of white supremacists, perhaps believing that white nationalism was dying. He wanted to get the most votes he could get; if anything he wanted them to integrate into the mainstream in the process.
Trump didn’t anticipate that the white nationalist movement could be galvanized because he didn’t understand the alt-right.
I am switching between white supremacist and white nationalist deliberately to identify two different things. I do not believe Donald Trump intended in any great fashion to give aid and comfort to the people on the borders between the mainstream and the extreme, much less to any organized movement with ambitions of growth. I believe he went after the dying extremists in an attempt to co-opt them. This does not explain the work Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway did together, though–but then, what does? That work was largely invisible.
posted by Jorge on
The path, in general terms, is this: Attack Roe and the Griswold (penumbra of the 9th Amendment) case line on which Roe is based.
That’s pretty bold. I can see they know what they’re doing. Is attacking Lawrence necessary? I’m sure it would increase their chances, but attacking Lawrence would not even be possible without a successful attack on Griswald. And even with a successful attack, wouldn’t the reasoning in Justice Stevens’s Bowers dissent still make sense based on the First Amendment precedents established in the case involving foreign language instruction and the case involving flag-burning? Is it really even remotely in the realm of sensibility to say that the First Amendment protects the right to romantic, sexual, and religious expression in public, but not in private?
Yes, I know, Justices Scalia and Thomas and all their little clones don’t like penumbras. But they deal with them all the time–and they way they deal with penumbras is very often to ask if they’re not exactly the same as the original situation.
posted by Houndentenor on
I’ve been hearing conservatives attack the right to privacy (in other words, Griswold) for over 30 years now. In the digital age what would it mean if the few privacy rights we actually have were to disappear?
posted by Tom Scharbach on
That’s pretty bold. I can see they know what they’re doing. Is attacking Lawrence necessary? I’m sure it would increase their chances, but attacking Lawrence would not even be possible without a successful attack on Griswald.
It is impossible to overturn Roe, which is based on the Griswold line, without a successful attack on Griswold. That’s why a frontal attack must be made on Griswold, and will be made.
If the Griswold penumbra rationale fails, a whole line of cases protecting sexual privacy must necessarily fail, and Lawrence is in the line of fire. That’s bad enough, but as Scalia pointed out in his Lawrence dissent, Lawrence opened the door and cleared the path for Obergefell.
If Lawrence doesn’t fall, an attack on Obergefell cannot be successful; if Lawrence falls, an attack on Obergefell is likely to be successful.
That’s why I have been pounding so hard over the years about the dangers of originalists like Scalia, Thomas and Alito, and pounding so hard on Trump being in a position to name Justices. If we get a majority of originalists on the Court (and we will if Trump sticks to “The List” and/or similar candidates throughout the course of his Presidency), Griswold will fall, either be explicitly overturned (as Lawrence overturned Hardwick, or be implicitly overturned (as Employment Division implicitly overturned Sherbert/Yoder as those cases were applicable to laws of general application).
I don’t like Trump or most of which he stood for during the campaign. I think that we are in for hard times, both domestically and in foreign affairs, if he sticks to the positions he took in the campaign. But all of it — getting played by midgets like the President of Taiwan in foreign affairs, taking a wrecking ball to treaties and trade agreements, unleashing nuclear proliferation, and taking the United States into pre-WWII isolationism — is less dangerous that what his Court appointments are likely to do to “the right to be left alone”.
posted by Jorge on
That’s bad enough, but as Scalia pointed out in his Lawrence dissent, Lawrence opened the door and cleared the path for Obergefell.
His whole point was that the majority opinion, though claiming not to be considering gay marriage, clearly wished to do so on a groundless basis.
If Lawrence doesn’t fall, an attack on Obergefell cannot be successful
As usual, I do not agree. Lawrence and all the rest were about sexual privacy. Obergefell was about money. Furthermore, one is about private conduct, one is about both public conduct and government conduct. Safeguarding a more fundamental right does not make a less fundamental right safe from attack.
But all of it… is less dangerous that what his Court appointments are likely to do to “the right to be left alone”.
That’s quite a statement. I can only understand it in the sense that a future administration can reverse everything else Trump does, assuming we survive the next 4-8 years.
I think this country can recover from the way Obergefell was decided (about which I have nothing nice to say) in much the same way we have recovered from Roe–in a fashion. When you have people going to jail and being fined out of business in less than five years in ways that violate their and society’s understanding of their fundamental constitutional right to freedom of religion, you have an existential threat to this country’s well-being. If freedom to dissent without social ostracism and public destruction is to have any meaning at all, then the risk of the dissent achieving the power and having long-term social and political success has to be allowed. I say risk in order to advance the idea that significant change will happen for the better if the opposition fights and falls short. It is nonetheless better to set back time 50 years than to have it come to a permanent end.
posted by JohnInCA on
“Lawrence and all the rest were about sexual privacy. Obergefell was about money.”
You might be confusing Obergefel with Windsor. Money (and inheritance rights) was at the heart of Windsor’s attack on DOMA Article II, but it didn’t play that large a role in the Obergefel decision.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
When you have people going to jail and being fined out of business in less than five years in ways that violate their and society’s understanding of their fundamental constitutional right to freedom of religion, you have an existential threat to this country’s well-being.
Whatever they, you or society may or may not think is the case, the law has never permitted religionists, public or private, to refuse to obey the law at will.
In the case of private citizens, the law requires, and has always required, that a “substantial burden” upon religious exercise be demonstrated in order to trigger either the Sherbert/Yoder test or the Reynolds/Employment Division” protections.
In the case of public officials, the law has never permitted government officials to refuse to perform their duties or enforce the law because of religious objection, but instead requires them to resign if their religious beliefs prohibit them from performing their duties or enforcing the law.
You obviously don’t like either result, as you have made clear in your many earlier comments on the subject, but what is, is. The Republic has survived for over 200 years balancing between laws of general application and religious expression along those lines, and if there is suddenly “an existential threat to this country’s well-being” because of that balance, the threat is coming from religious absolutists who demand a fundamental change in the balance, not from the law.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Immediately preceding comment, properly formatted:
When you have people going to jail and being fined out of business in less than five years in ways that violate their and society’s understanding of their fundamental constitutional right to freedom of religion, you have an existential threat to this country’s well-being.
Whatever they, you or society may or may not think is the case, the law has never permitted religionists, public or private, to refuse to obey the law at will.
In the case of private citizens, the law requires, and has always required, that a “substantial burden” upon religious exercise be demonstrated in order to trigger either the Sherbert/Yoder test or the Reynolds/Employment Division protections.
In the case of public officials, the law has never permitted government officials to refuse to perform their duties or enforce the law because of religious objection, but instead requires them to resign if their religious beliefs prohibit them from performing their duties or enforcing the law.
You obviously don’t like either result, as you have made clear in your many earlier comments on the subject, but what is, is.
The Republic has survived for over 200 years balancing between laws of general application and religious expression along those lines, and if there is suddenly “an existential threat to this country’s well-being” because of that balance, the threat is coming from religious absolutists who demand a fundamental change in the balance, not from the law.
posted by Jorge on
The Republic has survived for over 200 years balancing between laws of general application and religious expression along those lines, and if there is suddenly “an existential threat to this country’s well-being” because of that balance, the threat is coming from religious absolutists who demand a fundamental change in the balance, not from the law.
I agree entirely, as I have made clear in many earlier comments on the subject.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Tom: That’s bad enough, but as Scalia pointed out in his Lawrence dissent, Lawrence opened the door and cleared the path for Obergefell.
Jorge: His whole point was that the majority opinion, though claiming not to be considering gay marriage, clearly wished to do so on a groundless basis.
No, his whole point was this [emphasis mine], expressed in the conclusion to his dissent:
In short, if Lawrence stands, Obergefell is inevitable from a constitutional standpoint.
posted by Jorge on
That “Don’t you believe it” is Scalia making a tactical analysis of the results of the Justices in the majority making things up as they go along to suit their preconceived beliefs about how the case should be decided (the fact that I don’t happen to agree with his characterization is not germane). If the majority claims they intended for Lawrence not to be a precedent for marriage, then Scalia’s analysis is a necessary tactical deterrent to ensure the Justices keep their promise not to make Lawrence function as such a precedent.
I would be far, more open to persuasion that Lawrence is a precedent for Obergefell if instead of mirroring the reasoning of people and judges who set out to troll Justice Scalia, you cited the reasoning of the majority opinions of both cases (or alternately, Stevens’s dissent in Bowers). As it happens I think Stevens’s reasoning leaves the door wide open to Lawrence standing and Obergefell being overturned.
Even if I credited your reasoning, however, I would like to point out that stare decisis is a mandatory command for lower courts, not the Supreme Court itself. It is perfectly free to let the decision of Lawrence stand, while overruling its precedent.
Which I’m sure would have Scalia spinning so much in his grave that he would return to life as the living dead.
posted by JohnInCA on
Hold on, I’m confused.
I thought that using non-discrimination laws and the courts was the “wrong” way to do things. That the “right” way was to use social pressure to change things.
And now suddenly using social pressure to change things is also wrong?
So… if you don’t like an aspect of your society/culture, what are you supposed to do to make things better? Lobbying your legislators is out, seeking justice in the courts is out, boycotts, letter campaigns, and simply calling people nasty names is out. What are we supposed to do?
posted by Throbert McGee on
No, not at all. Sometimes using social pressure is the right approach; sometimes legislation is the right approach; sometimes going through the courts is the right approach. It all depends on the severity of the problem.
Chris Christie opined that you could pass “domestic partnership laws” through the elected legislature, but that the legal creation of “same-sex Marriage” should be done by popular referendum.
I would broadly agree with that approach, adding that one ought to challenge laws against private consensual sodomy through the courts (no matter what the legislators say), but that “wedding-cake discrimination” should be fought with privately organized boycotts and bad PR, not with government power.
posted by JohnInCA on
Texas dude. Just Texas. Per the stars laws, it is *still* illegal for me to fuck in the state. The state refuses to repeal an unconstitutional law because it *likes* publicly telling us to go elsewhere.
And you think the”right” way was to wait for the state to amend it’s constitution again (the first time named civil unions and domestic partnerships as well as marriage) so that out could *possibly* legalize civil unions.
And that’s ignoring that civil unions were at no point legally equivalent to marriage because of the Fed.
Your “right way” is functionally equivalent to “no way”. Why should anyone have signed onto that? Because some people wanted to vote on my marriage? Real convincing.
posted by JohnInCA on
Second thought:
Why shouldn’t gay people be paranoid about their marriage rights being yanked away?
In 2003, when I became an adult, it was illegal for me to fuck a boyfriend in Texas and a dozen other states. That same year, Massachusets ruled that it had to allow same-sex marriage.
Since then it’s been a whirlwind ride. In New Mexico we had an executive order regarding “domestic partners”, but oh, it turns out that the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, a publicly funded university, isn’t actually part of the state for those purposes. And then there was a county giving out marriage licenses, but then the state courts put a stop to that and deemed the licenses void.
Over here in California we had Mayor Newsom (or whatever his title at the time was) giving our marriage licenses, then he had to stop. Then the state SCOTUS said give ’em out, then Prop 8 said you had to stop. Then Prop 8 was struck down, but it got appealed. And then the SCOTUS voided the appeals on standing, letting folks marry again (for the third time).
And over in Massachusets, the first state to get gay marriage, what was happening? Governor Romney was fighting it every way he could, restricting it to only residents, dicking around with birth certificates, and in general resisting as many ways as possible.
What happened after Windsor and DADT? I heard lots of stories about states dicking around with their National Guard to make things difficult for gay soldiers, finding every way they could to screw folks over.
And when Obergefel finally happened? Well, we got Davis and Alabama.
Face it, this entire thing, from start to present, has been a case of “two steps forward, one step back”. And notably, the entire time folks like Mr. Miller have been warning that we’re taking our two steps too fast, and that we’ll fall back more then two steps and land on our face.
And now, suddenly, Mr. Miller thinks everything that has been shifting and chaotic is good, solid and stable, and that we don’t need to worry about exactly what he’s been fear-mongering on for years? It’s absurd.
posted by Throbert McGee on
I’d say more like “Nine steps forward, one step back.” Or, if you prefer, “Two grand jetés forward, one baby shuffle back.” Case in point:
Case in point. Neither the Kim Davis flap nor the Alabama rulings actually moved things backwards, locally speaking; rather, they attempted to maintain the local status quo.
It’s like SCOTUS said, “Simon says everyone take two steps forward,” and a couple states said,, “No thanks, I’ll stay right where I am.”
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Why shouldn’t gay people be paranoid about their marriage rights being yanked away?
Face it, this entire thing, from start to present, has been a case of “two steps forward, one step back”. And notably, the entire time folks like Mr. Miller have been warning that we’re taking our two steps too fast, and that we’ll fall back more then two steps and land on our face.
And now, suddenly, Mr. Miller thinks everything that has been shifting and chaotic is good, solid and stable, and that we don’t need to worry about exactly what he’s been fear-mongering on for years? It’s absurd.
Yes, it is, and particularly so given the President-Elect’s promise to sign FADA, his pledge to appoint the next Justice in the mold of Justice Scalia off a list of the most ultra-conservative judges in the country, his Cabinet appointments (e.g. Jeff Sessions for AG, for Christ’s sake), the likelihood that many/most/all of the Obama administration’s EO’s protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination in medical care and employment will be rescinded and/or abrogated, and so on, and the unrelenting efforts of Republican legislators to limit the effect of Obergerfell nationwide by a wide variety of noxious legislation.
If you want to see what the future most likely holds, folks, pay attention to the Heritage Foundation’s plans for the next four years, and get ready to fight back hard. And all the while, Stephen will prattle on about “the most gay-supportive Republican administration in history”.