Taking a Stand

by on

James Kirchick writes:

If the public face of the ACLU was Ira Glasser during the latter part of the previous century, today that honor can be claimed by a staff attorney named Chase Strangio … the ACLU’s deputy director for transgender justice. Like many activists consumed by this issue, he is uncompromising in demanding strict adherence to a set of highly contestable orthodoxies, and merciless toward anyone who dares question them. Two women who have—J.K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, and Abigail Shrier, author of a book about the role of “peer contagion” in the rising rate of teenage girls declaring themselves transgender—are “closely aligned with white supremacists in power,” Strangio declared on Twitter, offering not a shred of evidence for this claim. “Stopping the circulation of [Shrier’s] book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on,” he wrote, a rather bizarre position for an ACLU employee to endorse. …

Strangio is of course perfectly entitled to his views about the fairness of allowing natal males to compete against natal females in high school sports, and to advocate for an “information climate” suppressing books he doesn’t like. What’s puzzling is why someone with such pro-censorship inclinations would want to work, of all places, at the American Civil Liberties Union. … Puzzling, that is, until you realize that—like so many other institutions whose worthy missions we naively assumed to be inviolable—the ACLU is no longer itself.

Plus this:

And when other constitutional rights have come into conflict with a First Amendment freedom even more unpopular with progressives than speech—that of religion—the ACLU has made it all but official policy to consider claims of religious conscience as smokescreens for discrimination, arguing that an evangelical Christian baker must make cakes for same-sex weddings against his will (a violation of both expressive and religious freedom), and that Catholic hospitals must perform abortions.

Purposely misleading:

The downward spirals goes on and on … and on

9 Comments for “Taking a Stand”

  1. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    Last 100 @ACLU tweets by topic

    Immigration/Muslim ban: 8
    Police reform/racial justice: 9
    Voting rights: 7
    Economic inequality: 3
    Prison: 1
    Surveillance: 2
    Abortion: 3
    DC Statehood: 2
    ACLU fundraising: 1
    Trans issues: 63

    Free speech: 1
    Due process: 0

    … and 9 out of the last 10 threads on IGF (“The Lincoln Project, Exposed” being the exception) have involved transgender issues.

    Pot calling the kettle black.

  2. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    QUESTION: What do the following states have in common: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia?

    [Answer]

    QUESTION: What do many/most of the 63 ACLU tweets have in common? I don’t think that you’ll be surprised to discover that the answer is related.

    Some years ago, when Republicans in state legislatures reliably introduced scores of bills each session seeking to legitimize targeted, government-sanctioned discrimination against gays and lesbians, conservative homosexuals (just as reliably) complained that that the ACLU was too focused on gay/lesbian rights. Is it any surprise that conservative homosexuals now complain that the ACLU is too focused on transgender rights?

  3. posted by Kosh III on

    “the ACLU has made it all but official policy to consider claims of religious conscience as smokescreens for discrimination”

    That’s exactly what it is; a lame and transparent attempt to continue to bash gays.

    • posted by Agee on

      You have no idea what religious faith is, or you couldn’t make such an ignorant comment.

  4. posted by Kosh III on

    Meanwhile, important stuff gets ignored by the homocons; do they want this sort of hate?

    “Tennessee Republicans (legislators) focused on persecuting LGBT folks with awful bills that ban books that even mention them from our schools, and require a warning letter to be sent home to parents if an LGBT person is going to even be discussed…. Rep. Eddie Mannis, the only out gay Republican, tried to tell his colleagues as much with an impassioned plea, but it fell on deaf ears.

  5. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    “Meanwhile, important stuff gets ignored by the homocons …

    During the period 2004-2008, 30+ states passed anti-marriage amendments, and conservative homosexuals either ignored or supported the amendments. During that same period, anti-marriage proponents demonized gays and lesbians and stood by silently while Republican politicians used gays and lesbians as cannon fodder to energize the conservative Christian base of the Republican party. During the period 2008–2018, Republican legislators introduced hundreds of anti-equality bills in state legislatures, year after year, and conservative homosexuals either ignored or supported the bills. Conservative homosexuals supported the Republican Party in the 2016 and 2020 elections despite a national platform that pledged to roll back marriage equality, with only ritual protestation about “the most anti-LGBT Platform in the Party’s 162-year history”. Conservative homosexuals touted President Trump as “gay supportive” while Attorney General Sessions and cabinet/department heads rooted out and rolled back federal rules and regulations protecting gays and lesbians that were promulagated during the Obama administration. Post-Obergefell, conservative homosexuals touted the fact that Justice Kennedy was appointed by President Reagan while ignoring the fact that all of the other Justices nominated by Republicans voted against equal treatment of gays and lesbians under the law, and stood by silently while Republicans in the Senate refused to even consider the nomination of Judge Garland, a judicial moderate, to the Court.

    Conservative homosexuals have always ignored anti-equality actions by Republicans, attempting to appease the conservative Christian base of the Republican Party. Why would anyone expect that it will be different this time around?

    • posted by Jorge on

      During the period 2004-2008, 30+ states passed anti-marriage amendments, and conservative homosexuals either ignored or supported the amendments.

      And then the Supreme Court came along, gave a giant middle finger to democracy, and here we are. Liberals have learned to become emboldened to replace democracy with hatred over and over again in gaslighting argument after gaslighting argument until it sticks, whether in court or in legislature or some bumpkin anti-discrimination committee or aristocratic social media platform.

      It is astonishing to me every now and then how much time liberals, homoradicals, and transradical spend hating people rather than loving policy. Talking about who the bad guys are, rather than explaining why they’re the good guys. Most people are good people; not anymore. If you have even one errant thought, wicked you are.

      It is kind of like a zero tolerance for fighting policy. If the victim gets suspended for being beat up, he’s going to learn next time to beat the crap out of the other guy, and strike the principal when he comes to intervene. That is why Republicans (Republicans still exist) have plugged their ears and passed what their conscience says to do.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      “It is kind of like a zero tolerance for fighting policy. If the victim gets suspended for being beat up, he’s going to learn next time to beat the crap out of the other guy, and strike the principal when he comes to intervene. That is why Republicans (Republicans still exist) have plugged their ears and passed what their conscience says to do.

      Uh, huh. Conservative homosexuals were forced to become anti-equality because left/liberal gays and lesbians were pro-equality. Sure.

      If conservative homosexuals had worked within the Republican Party over the last three decades to advance support for equal treatment under the law for gays and lesbians with anything close to the way in which left/liberal gays and lesbians worked within the Democratic Party, the Republican Party would not be nearly as unrelenting in it’s opposition to equality. Conservative homosexuals elected to appease conservative Christians, and we are where we are, for good or ill.

  6. posted by Jorge on

    Conservative homosexuals were forced to become anti-equality because left/liberal gays and lesbians were pro-equality. Sure.

    You are trying to paint lipstick on a pig.

Comments are closed.