If Trump Is for It, the LGBTQ Left Is Against It

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11 Comments for “If Trump Is for It, the LGBTQ Left Is Against It”

  1. posted by Kosh III on

    Log Cabin is still around? Who knew?
    They certainly are NOT doing one fraking thing to oppose the anti-gay acts of Trump such as the allowance of discrimination in adoption in SC and other places.
    LC and Trump are not opposing the laws proposed in Tennessee and other states which would destroy equality.

    • posted by Mike King & David "TJ" Bauler on

      As two progressives, We have no objection to the Trump administration actually doing something substantive in favor of LGBT rights. However, “talk is cheap, let us see some action”.

  2. posted by JohnInCA on

    Look, if the Trump administration pulls it off, that’s great. But like his declaration on stopping AIDS, his administration has given folks zero reason to think this is a serious effort and not just a sideshow distraction.

    Or to put it another way… President Trump has problems delivering on his promises to his own base, and you expect me to think he’s serious about an issue he has previously expressed no interest in or understanding of?

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      Or to put it another way… President Trump has problems delivering on his promises to his own base, and you expect me to think he’s serious about an issue he has previously expressed no interest in or understanding of?

      I hope that President Trump will take the initiative seriously.

      I’m not optimistic, though, about the President’s commitment to pushing this initiative.

      And I cannot help but remember that the United States voted against a UN resolution to end capital punishment for homosexuality. That doesn’t instill confidence.

  3. posted by sid on

    i do agree with the above person’s comment and i hope Our LGBT Community will have justice soon.

  4. posted by Jorge on

    “The administration is responding in part to a reported hanging of a young gay man in Iran, Trump’s top geopolitical foe.”

    Oh, that again. Not one week passes since Wiener gets out and the Trump administration’s channeling Santorum.

    “Rather than actually being about helping queer people around the world, the campaign looks more like another instance of the right using queer people as a pawn to amass power and enact its own agenda.”

    *Sigh.* No dears. It’s true believing Christian RINO conservatism runnig wild. Maybe some of them aren’t Christians, or conservatives, or RINOs, but that’s who we’re dealing with here.

    “Grennell’s sudden interest in Iran’s anti-gay laws is strikingly similar to Trump’s rhetoric after the 2016 Pulse massacre in Orlando, Florida. After the deadly shooting, Trump used the 49 deaths as a way to galvanize support for an anti-Muslim agenda rather than find a way to support LGBTQ+ people.”

    I seem to recall a recent story that this line of the speech came about at the insistence of an openly gay delegate for Trump to say something pro-gay or anti-homophobic.

    Well, Trump being a Republican, he said it like a Republican. I think some gays don’t recognize that they sometimes sound more like Democrats than like gays.

  5. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Scott Shackford: So just to be clear here: Trump is being yelled at by some LGBT voices for continuing on a policy implemented by the Obama administration. And the Obama administration’s move was a widely lauded reversal of Bush’s rejection, and Bush’s rejection of this very same declaration was previously attacked by LGBT leaders.

    Just to be accurate: President Obama’s initiative was aimed at reducing all legal impediments on gays and lesbians. President Trump’s (assuming that he was actually aware of it and approved it before it was announced) initiative is much more limited, as reported by the NBC News article cited in this thread:

    Narrowly focused on criminalization, rather than broader LGBT issues like same-sex marriage, the campaign was conceived partly in response to the recent reported execution by hanging of a young gay man in Iran, the Trump administration’s top geopolitical foe.

    This is a distinction with a difference, not mere nit picking. President Obama’s initiative targeted, for example, Russia’s outrageous laws severely restricting gay/lesbian rights, while President Trump’s initiative does not.

    To put this in perspective: Applied to the United States, President Trump’s initiative would have stopped dead cold at the boundary established by Lawrence. It would not have touched the issues involved in Romer, or Windsor, or Obergefell. It would not have addressed ongoing conservative efforts to strip gay/lesbian married couples of benefits under marriage laws, limit/prohibit adoptions by gay/lesbian couples, or sanction religiously-driven special discrimination against gays and lesbians, and so on.

    Nonetheless the Trump administration’s initiative signals forward movement in Republican policy, and, if the President gets behind it after he is made aware of the initiative, a starting point for future Republican administrations.

  6. posted by Houndentenor on

    If the Trump administration is concerned about gay people being executed for being gay, they can start by issuing refugee visas to gay men from Chechnya. I would like to see that happen and would applaud them if they did. I’m also not holding my breath. In reality the current statement from Grennel is probably just a set-up for an invasion of Iran. I hope I’m wrong about that.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      In reality the current statement from Grennel is probably just a set-up for an invasion of Iran. I hope I’m wrong about that.

      I think you are. The Trump administration doesn’t have the competence to put an invasion coalition together.

      More likely, it is just the most recent distraction and cover for the administration’s dismal record on LGBT protections. “But what about Iran? They kill gays in Iran!” is an old conservative homosexual meme, as old as dirt. Read the IGF back files and you’ll find copious examples (e.g. “More Iranian Horrors” by Stephen H. Miller on August 14, 2014, or “Iranian Outrage” by Stephen H. Miller on September 21, 2005).

      Iran has been a conservative homosexual fixation for a long time. Nothing is new.

      Glad to see you posting again on IGF, Houndentenor.

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