Not the Old GOP

4 Comments for “Not the Old GOP”

  1. posted by Jorge on

    The new poll not only raises questions about Trump’s efforts to target his base, but raises fresh questions about support for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, who has been criticized as anti-LGBTQ+ by 27 equality organizations.

    Winterhof acknowledged that the poll may feel like a contradiction to many LGBTQ+ people. This year has been the deadliest on record for transgender people, and the 2020 election season has seen a number of homophobic and transphobic political attacks.
    “I do think it is not people’s intent to discriminate,” Winterhof said, adding that there are exceptions.

    There was a time when the Catholic Church could argue against removing homosexuality from the DSM while simultaneously arguing for their rights to dignified treatment. I started dancing in the streets over the society’s progress on broad sentiments a very long time ago; polls this vague no longer mean much to me.

    To give another example of the principle on a different subject, the late Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens’s confirmation was opposed by women’s rights groups because of his inconsistent decisions on sex discrimination cases in which he articulated a (probably conservative) standard that the employment result must actually change if you change the plaintiff’s sex before finding discrimination. And yet very similar thinking led eventually to landmark decisions banning sexual harassment in the workplace, straight male-on-straight male sexual harassment in the workplace, and even employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. This does not mean the women’s rights organizations were wrong! The number of loopholes the federal civil rights act leaves are considerable, leading to my state and city having an exhaustive list of protective categories that are relevant to wider patterns of sex discrimination, including marital status (the point of contention in Stevens’s confirmation), domestic partnership status, victim of domestic violence, victim of sex offenses and stalking.

    So I would today be a little skeptical of attempts to define support for gay+ rights from the perspective of the right. The lowest common denominator is important; it is not everything.

  2. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    There is a difference between acquiescence and support.

    President Trump’s November 2106 post-election statement on (“It was settled in the Supreme Court. I mean it’s done. These cases have gone to the Supreme Court. They’ve been settled. And I’m fine with that.”) is a statement of acquiescence. President Trump did not utter a single word in favor of marriage equality while running for office, was content to run on the unequivocally anti-marriage 2016 Republican platform, about which he said nothing, and has said nothing further on the issue of marriage equality (to my best knowledge).

    In contrast, President Obama’s 2012 run for the White House (during which actively supported marriage equality and ran on the “We support marriage equality …” 2012 Democratic platform, which he had a hand in developing), as well as President Obama’s post-Obergefell June 2015 “A Victory for America” statement are examples of support.

    The difference between the two is evident and undeniable. The former acquiescence, the latter support.

    The conservative homosexual mantra “the first president who favored marriage equality when he took office” is so perfect an example of sleight of hand that it is worthy of an ambulance-chasing lawyer, if untrue.

  3. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    The interesting thing about the Hart Associates survey is that the poll (in line with others taken over the last two years) suggests that an emerging majority of Republicans support marriage equality, anti-discrimination and public accommodations laws, equal access to medical care, transgender military service and other pro-equality measures.

    And yet the Republican Party as a whole sticks to anti-equality positions, and the President is given a pass on banning transgender military service, issuing executive orders allowing federal contractors to discriminate and issue executive orders allowing hospitals and other medical service providers to discriminate.

    I hope that in the Republican Party that emerges post-Trump (either in 2021 or in 2024), Republican politicians (not to mention conservative homosexuals) will begin to stand up to the conservative Christian wing of the party, loosening (or better yet, eliminating) that wing’s lock on the party.

    The Christio-Republican alliance initiated by President Reagan has done more to destroy the conservative movement in the United States than any other factor in the last four decades, including President Trump’s rampant betrayal of conservative principles across the board. That alliance was born of a Faustian bargain, and the Republican Party is going to pay the price for that bargain, sooner or later.

  4. posted by JohnInCA on

    … and?

    A majority of Republican voters supported repealling DADT, even as Republican politicians defended it to the bitter end.

    A majority of Republican voters support non-discirmination protections for LGBT folk, even as Republican politicians call them tyranny.

    Republican voters, as a group, have always been ahead of Republican politicians when it comes to LGBT rights because pro-gay Republican voters have never been willing to punish Republican politicians for anti-gay stances, but anti-gay Republican voters have always been willing to punish Republican politicians for anti-gay stances.

    So sure. Republican voters are fine way gay marriage, but they aren’t the ones being catered to, which is why we’re going to get anti-gay Republican politicians for years and years and years.

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