Gays for Trump Prepare to Celebrate

The Washington Blade reports on gay Trump supporters’ upcoming inaugural festivities:

At least three LGBT Republican sponsored events, including a “Deplora-Ball,” are scheduled to take place in or near Washington during the Jan. 20 weekend when Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States.

This is sure to enrage LGBT progressives who are informed by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddox that internment in concentration camps may be just around the corner [no, she wasn’t kidding]. And judging from much of the mainstream and LGBT media’s coverage of the president elect, it would be difficult to explain why anyone who is L, G, B or T would have voted for Trump or plans to celebrate his presidency.

Here’s a look back on the Trump/LGBT flag-holding incident and how it triggered LGBT-left apoplexy. And my thoughts last July on Trump’s remarks about protecting “our LGBTQ citizens” who are “wonderful Americans” during his acceptance speech at the GOP convention. In a post-election interview with “60 Minutes,” Trump said of gay marriage that “these cases have gone to the Supreme Court. They’ve been settled. And I’m fine with that.”

[Added: The point of the above is not that Trump is exemplary and certainly not that he was better than the Democrats on LGBT equality issues. It’s to point out that he has moved the bar upward in this regard for GOP presidential nominees, even as his party’s platform has remained hidebound. So if you’re gay and supportive of his wider agenda, then celebrating his inauguration isn’t a sign of betrayal and self-loathing, as many LGBT progressives believe it to be.]

As I have argued, the LGBT left’s responses to Trump’s selection for his administration of figures such as vice president Mike Pence and Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson are often based on exaggerations, if not flat-out distortions, of their positions. While there are certainly members of the incoming administration opposed to gay equality, the Trump administration, at the direction of the president himself, could eschew an anti-gay agenda and at the same time choose not to continue some of the most divisive directives of the Obama administration (such as the federal mandate on transgender use of public school restrooms and locker rooms).

Maybe the next 4 (or 8) years will prove my optimism wrong, or maybe it will expose the reaction of the LGBT left as hysterical and hyper-partisan.

21 Comments for “Gays for Trump Prepare to Celebrate”

  1. posted by Jorge on

    What on earth possessed me to schedule my vacation so that I’m working on that day?

    The story of my life: I’ll be stuck hanging a picture of him displaying a grammatical horror.

  2. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Maybe the next 4 (or 8) years will prove my optimism wrong, or maybe it will expose the reaction of the LGBT left as hysterical and hyper-partisan.

    Let’s see what the Trump administration actually does. Let’s see what the President-Elect does with respect to Executive Orders banning employment discrimination by federal contractors and medical care discrimination by medical service providers funded by the federal government. Let’s see what the Attorney General does with respect to the government’s position on pending lawsuits affecting gays and lesbians. Let’s see whether
    the President-Elect puts the kibosh on the First Amendment Defense Act. Let’s see what the Secretary of State does with respect to policies encouraging foreign governments to treat gays and lesbians like human beings. Let’s see who the President-Elect nominates for the
    Supreme Court. Let’s see whether the administration’s replacement plan for Obamacare includes provisions protecting gays and lesbians from medical care discrimination. And so on.

    I’m not optimistic that the Trump administration is going to usher in a new era of bipartisan support for equal treatment under the law. You seem to be. We will both likely get a solid read in 2017 on whether or not your optimism, or my lack of optimism, is right.

    My guess is that even if your optimism is proven wrong, that will not deter you from denouncing the “reaction of the LGBT left as hysterical and hyper-partisan” at every opportunity. I hope I’m wrong, but we’ll see about that, too.

    • posted by TJ on

      1. When talking about “delorables” it was a (poorly worded) criticism at the ties the Trump campaign had to white supremacists. It was not a complain

  3. posted by Houndentenor on

    Tillerson’s record is mixed. Pence’s is terrible. The rest? None of them are GOOD on lbgt issues. Many are terrible. But we can always count on Stephen to defend any Republican no matter how anti-gay.

  4. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    … LGBT progressives who are informed by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddox that internment in concentration camps may be just around the corner ,,,

    Really? Stephen’s linked source:

    MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow joked Wednesday that if President-elect Donald Trump were to appear on her show, her first question would be whether he planned to send her “to a camp.”
     
    Maddow — host of “The Rachel Maddow Show,” MSNBC’s highest-rated program — was a guest on Bravo’s “Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen.” 
     
    “If you booked Donald Trump on your show, what would your first question be?” Cohen asked Maddow, reading a viewer question.
     
    After a pause, Maddow deadpanned: “Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp?”
     
    An amused Cohen quickly changed the topic and moved on. 

    You’ve just given us a textbook example of a “hysterical and hyper-partisan” reaction. I think that its your best yet, although repeatedly comparing gays and lesbians to Robspierre and coming up with the “Obama Reign of Regulatory Terror” were right up there.

    Keep it up. You’ll earn that air kiss from Milo sooner or later. Or maybe a gig as a headline writer for Breitbart.

    • posted by Jorge on

      Have you ever heard the expression, drunk tongue, sober mind?

      Well, here’s a similar proposition about comic tongue, sober mind.

      Comic tongue:

      After a pause, Maddow deadpanned: “Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp?”

      An amused Cohen quickly changed the topic and moved on.

      Sober mind:

      In July, Maddow shared that she had been prepping for a possible Trump presidency by studying the first few months of Adolf Hitler’s tenure as German chancellor, beginning in 1934.

      “Over the past year I’ve been reading a lot about what it was like when Hitler first became chancellor. I am gravitating toward moments in history for subliminal reference in terms of cultures that have unexpectedly veered into dark places, because I think that’s possibly where we are,” she told Rolling Stone magazine.

      The reason Rachel Maddow is an easy target isn’t because of what she says when she’s joking. It’s because of the many examples of what she says when she’s not joking, dead serious, and trying to persuade.

      If Maddow had any history of temperance, patience, tolerance, or self-doubt about her chosen cause and target, then she would be due more respect. These however are qualities she has chosen not to embody. This is what makes her a lower character than Ann Coulter and Steve Bannon. I am sure that there will be an attempt to prove me wrong by pointing me to her guest interviews.

      • posted by Throbert McGee on

        Oh, SNAP.

        Jorge is a black-belt, I think.

      • posted by Throbert McGee on

        By the way, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that expression “drunk tongue, sober mind” in English, but I’ve certainly heard it in Russian: “What’s on the mind of a sober man is on the tongue of a drunkard.”

        And the ancient Romans put it as In vino, veritas — “in wine, is truth.”

  5. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    [Added: The point of the above is not that Trump is exemplary and certainly not that he was better than the Democrats on LGBT equality issues. It’s to point out that he has moved the bar upward for GOP presidential nominees, so if you’re gay and supportive of his his wider agenda, then celebrating his inauguration isn’t a sign of betrayal and self-loathing, as many LGBT progressives believe it to be.]

    That makes sense, Stephen.

    But the fact that Trump “has moved the bar upward for GOP presidential nominees” is neither the end point nor the determinative point.

    The question in my mind: Are we getting another president like President Bush II, who talked “compassionate conservatism” and seemed to be benign when it came to gays and lesbians, but then lowered the hammer when the chips were down and brought us 30+ anti-marriage amendments, or are we getting a president who will move the ball forward?

    We’ll need to see what happens during the next 4-8 years to get the answer to that question.

    Words and symbols are important, but actions are what count.

    • posted by Jorge on

      I’ll ask the Muslim and Mexican hate crime victims to keep that in mind when Trump backs down from his many promises.

  6. posted by Throbert McGee on

    Are we getting another president like President Bush II, who talked “compassionate conservatism” and seemed to be benign when it came to gays and lesbians, but then lowered the hammer when the chips were down and brought us 30+ anti-marriage amendments, or are we getting a president who will move the ball forward?

    Ummm… Dubya didn’t bring us those “30+ anti-marriage amendments” with his magical Thor hammer; they were brought forward in an assortment of states. And the effect was to maintain the status quo (no gay marriage), not to move the clock backward.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      Dubya didn’t bring us those “30+ anti-marriage amendments” with his magical Thor hammer; they were brought forward in an assortment of states.

      The anti-marriage amendment strategy was integral to the Bush/Rove/Mehlman 2004 reelection strategy and actively encouraged by the national campaign.

      And the effect was to maintain the status quo (no gay marriage), not to move the clock backward.

      The effect — both intended and actual — was to eliminate, as long as possible, the ability of gays and lesbians to pursue marriage equality at the state level through the legislatures and through the state courts, to eliminate altogether the ability of gays and lesbians to seek redress from state legislatures and state courts.

      At a time when, little by slowly, state-by-state, gays and lesbians were poised to make progress at the state level (witness what happened over the next few years in states without anti-marriage amendments), the effect — intended and actual — was to set the clock backwards, not to “preserve the status quo”. That was the slogan, certainly, but not the reality.

      The anti-marriage effort at state level was accompanied by attempts (doomed to failure, but an attempt) to lock down gays and lesbians at the federal level with a federal anti-marriage amendment and legislative efforts to remove marriage equality from the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Both efforts were supported by the Bush II administration.

      • posted by Jorge on

        I find the sourcing of the link unconvincing. The original interview by the Atlantic with Ken Mehlman gives no indication of how he “knew” Karl Rove was working hand-in-hand with those other states, or about what exactly Rove or anyone else in the Bush administration was doing. It doesn’t even include a direct quote from Mehlman–the phrasing in the Advocate is very misleading here. For all I know, he was fed a leading question based on the reporter’s own speculation, and simply acceded to it, rather than answering based on inside knowledge.

        In politics, rumors and accusations have a way of taking a life of their own to such an extent that it becomes difficult to distinguish them from fact. This is especially true of persons and organizations, such as the Bush administration that are reticent enough not to have enough of a record that it’s easy to tell when they’re being disingenuous.

        If you would play a part in this game of telephone the Advocate is playing, how are we to know that Mehlman himself was not playing his own sucker role instead of being the actual source?

        It has reached the point that the conditions necessary for me to believe this accusation would have to be evidence stateside, rather than from the national side.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      Jorge, we’ve been around this track many, many times.

      The Bush/Rove/Mehlman strategy of using same-sex marriage as a wedge issue in order to motivate the conservative Christian base of the party is well documented, by journalists, by subsequent statements from party officials and politicians involved, and by reputable studies of the election.

      • posted by Jorge on

        by journalists

        You’ll excuse me if I don’t go rushing to eat up their every word.

        Secondhand.

        by subsequent statements from party officials and politicians involved

        I repeat my above objection. If by saying we’ve been around this subject before, you mean to suggest that the answer to my doubts about the method of collusion has been Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman telling their stateside allies and colleagues that they should go around saying “faggot, faggot”, I have to give a digital facepalm.

        and by reputable studies of the election.

        This is the first time I have ever read the claim that there are reputable studies of the 2004 election that concluded that there was a Bush/Rove/Mehlman strategy to use gay marriage as a wedge issue to motivate the Christian base.

        I think it is far more likely that it was more akin to a SuperPAC strategy.

      • posted by Tom Scharbach on

        This is the first time I have ever read the claim that there are reputable studies of the 2004 election that concluded that there was a Bush/Rove/Mehlman strategy to use gay marriage as a wedge issue to motivate the Christian base.

        BS. I’ve cited studies in comments to earlier threads. Go read them.

  7. posted by Lori Heine on

    I guess I have difficulty dealing with irrationality, regardless of which team it comes from.

    Both parties are using same-sex marriage as a wedge issue. Anyone with a triple-digit I.Q. understands that.

    Neither one is trustworthy, and neither gives jack about gays. This post is yet another opportunity to virtue-signal about which party is supposedly not quite as bad as the other. It’s a waste of time and energy.

    Trump will cynically use and exploit LGBT Americans. Clinton would have done the same.

    • posted by JohnInCA on

      If you’re going to be exploited either way, may as well get something out of it.

      How is that irrational?

      • posted by Lori Heine on

        My, aren’t you a good little sheep!

  8. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    BTW, Stephen, I hope that you will have a good time celebrating the inauguration. Are you going to one of the tassel-loafer LCR cocktail hours or one of the more fun-sounding events, like the DeploraBall?

  9. posted by Serbo-Canadian of Macau on

    I wonder if the fact that Don Trump will be bombing far fewer non-US citizens, including those of LGBT orientation, worldwide than did the Nobel peace Prizae winner Indonesian citizen (since he was adopted there) one B. Hussein Obama does or does not count for anything in terms of his LGBT-friendliness.

    After all people being allowed to not be bombed and therrefore survive is indeed a kind/degree of friendliness towards those people.

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