Author Archives: Stephen H. Miller

The Rejection of Compromise: Take Two

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The polarizing conflict between religious liberty (here without the delegitimatizng “scare quotes” so ubiquitous in LGBT circles) and gay rights/LGBT anti-discrimination law was addressed by Jonathan Rauch, a past Independent Gay Forum contributing author, when he spoke at the University of Illinois Law School recently (viewable here via YouTube, about 40 minutes).

Rauch starts by noting that to understand where we are in the discussion of gay rights versus religious liberty, consider two bills now before Congress:

One is called the Equality Act. It would grant [LGBT] Americans…protection from housing, employment and public-accommodations discrimination under federal law, which is something that we lack at present. It’s championed by Democrats and liberals.

The other piece of legislation is called the First Amendment Defense Act, or FADA. It would pre-emptively shield all those people who object to same sex marriages or who choose to discriminate against same-sex marriages…whether on religious or moral grounds…from any federal sanction or disallowance of benefit…. It is championed, as you would imagine, by Republicans and conservatives.

Though coming at the question from opposite corners, the two bills have something in common: each tries to take all the marbles and leave the other side with nothing, or at least with as little as possible. The Equality Act includes a provision revoking any protection which religious objectors might enjoy under the [federal] Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The First Amendment Defense Act shields the objectors from discrimination while leaving gay people wholly unprotected from discrimination under federal law.

If these bills are opening positions in a negotiation, then what should ultimately happen is legislative bargaining leading to the obvious compromise: protections for gay people plus exemptions for religious objectors.

That, however, seems unlikely to happen because advocates on both sides aren’t interested in forging a compromise—which, Rauch notes, is “emblematic of an unfortunate development: an issue on which a few years ago there seemed to be reasonably good prospects for reasonable accommodations…has hardened into legal and political trench warfare.”

To which I’d add, the polarization/compromise-rejection serves those who don’t actually want a solution because they profit from permanent cultural warfare. And that’s because ongoing cultural war equals (1) big money flowing to advocacy groups and (2) hot-button issues that the political parties can use to fire-up their respective bases.

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No Compromise, Declare LGBT Activists

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Buzzfeed takes a look at the growing split among LGBT activists groups about whether to pursue the achievable—additional state and perhaps federal legislation outlawing employment and housing discrimination against LGBT individuals—or oppose such legislation unless it also covers public accommodations, which would extend to everything from Christian bakers who don’t want to put two grooms atop a wedding cake to private businesses that want restrooms restricted to biological genders.

Reports Buzzfeed’s Dominic Holden:

One key player is the Gill Foundation…. Gill and several groups that receive its grants, including Freedom for All Americans and the National Center for Transgender Equality, contend this sort of compromise may be their only shot of winning civil rights for millions of LGBT people at the state level in the next decade, even if those gains are incomplete. Leaders of those organizations say they can return to these legislatures in the future to finish the job of passing public accommodations when the issue becomes more palatable.

But groups across the field, including the ACLU and the Human Rights Campaign, have argued the short-term gain approach could amount to entering a box canyon. It may take years to pass laws that provide public protections in the future — if ever. And leaving them out may even send a message that discrimination in public is acceptable.

The ACLU sent a blunt letter to Pennsylvania lawmakers and organizations on June 10 detailing their objections to the compromise bill.

I think anti-discrimination laws are often misused and that applying local ordinances on public accommodations to persecute small business owners who, as a matter of their religious convictions, decline to provide creative services to same-sex weddings is gruesomely authoritarian. But I can accept workplace and housing statutes, and apparently so can a lot of transgendered people. As Buzzfeed notes:

In Ohio, LGBT activists shut down a bill this session that left out transgender people. However, Grant Stancliff, a spokesperson for Equality Ohio, told BuzzFeed News that a bill that includes transgender people, yet leaves out public accommodations, may be an appealing compromise to some activists.

“We have heard from transgender people that the biggest wound is in housing and employment,” he said. “So if we were able to secure that, the material benefit for a lot of people’s lives would be pretty big.”

One has to wonder how much of the “no compromise” intransigence is principled opposition on the all-or-nothing front, and how much is based on knowing that not passing anti-discrimination legislation at all is more likely to keep the base fired up and shelling out the bucks.

More. For more than two decades the Human Rights Campaign has failed to pass its signature legislative goal, which for most of that time was the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and is now the Equality Act. This includes periods with both a Democratic president and Democratic congress (under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama), and periods with a Republican congress but enough GOP support to push ENDA through. What happened? Every time the measure was poised to pass, activist groups would insert some new provision that would lose majority support (adding transgender protections most prominently, and now the expansion to include public accommodations). Or, as with ENDA under Harry Reid’s Senate and Nancy Pelosi’s House, the Democrats would strangely fail to move the bill out of committee, with nary a protest from HRC—until Republicans were back in charge.

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Log Cabin Makes Most of Bad Situation

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The Log Cabin Republicans national office has issued a statement explaining why they aren’t endorsing Donald Trump, while acknowledging the fact (so cravenly misreported by the Democratic Party aligned LGBT media) that Trump is the best GOP presidential nominee on LGBT issues:

Mr. Trump is perhaps the most pro-LGBT presidential nominee in the history of the Republican Party. His unprecedented overtures to the “LGBTQ community”—a first for any major-party candidate in our nation’s history—are worthy of praise, and should serve as a clarion call to the GOP that the days of needing to toe an anti-LGBT line are now a thing of the past.

But Log Cabin Republicans have long emphasized that we are not a single-issue organization, nor are our members single-issue voters. Even if we were, rhetoric alone regarding LGBT issues does not equate to doctrine. As Mr. Trump spoke positively about the LGBT community in the United States, he concurrently surrounded himself with senior advisors with a record of opposing LGBT equality, and committed himself to supporting legislation such as the so-called “First Amendment Defense Act” that Log Cabin Republicans opposes.

Should Mr. Trump become our nation’s next President, Log Cabin Republicans welcomes the opportunity to work with his administration to ensure the advances in LGBT freedom we have fought for and secured will continue. Until and unless that happens, our trust would be misplaced.

LCR was in a difficult situation. Trump’s personality defects and dismissiveness toward certain liberty rights are what disqualify him, making it hard or impossible for many Republicans of conscience to give Trump their support. But being anti-gay is not one of his deficiencies.

As I’ve said, both Clinton and Trump are terrible choices. Hopefully, four years from now the country can rectify its mistake.

More. As noted in my last post, gay Trump supporters can make a legitimate case even if it’s one I don’t embrace, as others are doing. But LGBT progressives have gone off the deep end with anti-Trump fear-mongering, in service (of course) to the one true party.

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The Other Option

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Terry Michael, who supports Libertarian Gary Johnson, asks a pertinent question: “Why do LGBT voters ask so little of Hillary? He writes:

I am baffled how organizations supposedly representing us have positioned the LGBT community as an adjunct to the Democratic Party. … The prime example of LGBT organizations seduced by the Democratic Party and The Clintons is the Human Rights Campaign — the other HRC — and its executive director, Chad Griffin, a Clinton crony from Bill’s hometown of Hope, Ark.

As I’ve said, Griffin’s HRC and other well-heeled LGBT lobbies are first and foremost Democratic machine operations, with a mission to corral LGBT dollars and votes for the party ticket.

More. Via the Wall Street Journal, ‘Country’ Gay Couple Backing Trump Receives Threats and Barbs—From Other Gay Men:

It’s not OK to be gay, and also support Donald Trump—that’s the overwhelming reaction from more than 900 people who commented on a Wall Street Journal video of a young couple at a Trump rally posted to Facebook earlier this month.

The Journal’s interview with Dewey Lainhart, 31 years old, and his fiance Cody Moore, 22 years old, at Mr. Trump’s rally in Cincinnati on Oct. 13 has gotten around 200,000 views.

In the video, Mr. Lainhart says he works in the steel industry and shares Trump’s skepticism about multilateral trade deals. He says, “It’s time for a change, and Trump’s the man for it.” He started a Facebook page in support of the candidate called “LGBT for Trump.”…

Most of the comments ridiculed Messrs. Lainhart and and Moore for supporting Mr. Trump — calling them “rednecks” and suggesting that someone should “take away their gay card.”

I’m a free-trade supporter (just one reason I can’t back Trump), but the condescension toward this couple and the call to “take away their gay card” is classic.

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An Honest Look at Trump

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As readers know, I’ll be voting for Gary Johnson on the Libertarian ticket—not because I think he’d be a great president, but because the major party candidates are both personally repugnant advocates of, in different respects, truly awful policies. The next four years, most likely under Clinton, will be a rough patch in any event.

That said, readers also know that I am sickened by the way LGBT progressives have, with utter dishonesty, characterized Donald Trump as “anti-gay” because that false narrative serves their party. At some point, the mendacity is so corrupting that one can only despair of these people.

So I welcomed David Lampo’s A Gay Defense of Donald Trump, one small voice of reason amid a sea of hysterical base-frightening in the Washington Blade. As Lampo writes:

The fact is that any honest look at Trump’s record and views on gay rights shows that most of the attacks by gay Democrats on his views are simply incorrect.

Trump, of course, has been a New York Democrat and social liberal for most of his adult life, chummy with many Democratic politicians, including the Clintons, and active in many charities, including support for AIDS charities. He has a long record of public support for expanding gay rights, including adding sexual orientation to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He stated support for employment nondiscrimination as far back as 2000 in his book, “The America We Deserve,” in which he wrote of his support for a country “free of racism, discrimination against women, or discrimination against people based on sexual orientation.”

He publicly supported repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and in an interview with The Brody File (a very conservative radio show) in 2011, in response to a question about civil unions, he said, “First of all, I live in New York. I know many, many gay people. Tremendous people. And to be honest with you … I haven’t totally formed my opinion. But there can be no discrimination against gays.”

Lampo concludes:

There’s no doubt one can find much to criticize in Trump (and, for that matter, Hillary Clinton), but to label him anti-gay or a mouthpiece of the religious right is so off-base and incorrect it calls into question the credibility and honesty of those making such accusations.

That’s putting it charitably.

More. A bit off-topic, but this is what you won’t learn about Clinton by reading and viewing liberal media. Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Readers of these pages know of the Uranium One deal in which a Canadian businessman got Bill Clinton to help him get control of uranium mining fields in Kazakhstan. The businessman soon gave $31 million to the Clinton Foundation, with a pledge of $100 million more. Uranium One acquired significant holdings in the U.S. A Russian company moved to buy it. The deal needed U.S. approval, including from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

While it was under consideration the Clinton Foundation received more money from Uranium One. Bill Clinton got a $500,000 speech fee. Mrs. Clinton approved the deal. The Russian company is now one of the world’s largest uranium producers. Significant amounts of U.S. uranium are, in effect, owned by Russia. This summer a WikiLeaks dump showed the State Department warning that Russia was moving to control the global supply of nuclear fuel. The deal went through anyway, and the foundation flourished.

In addition:

Peter Schweizer, who broke the Uranium One story, reported in these pages how Mrs. Clinton also pushed for a U.S.-Russian technology initiative…. Of the 28 announced “key partners,” 60% had made financial commitments to the Clinton Foundation. Even Russian investors ponied up. … U.S. military experts warned of satellite, space and nuclear technology transfers. The FBI thought the Russian partners’ motive was to “gain access to classified, sensitive, and emerging technology.” WikiLeaks later unearthed a State Department cable expressing concern about the project. Somehow, said Mr. Schweizer, the Clinton State Department “missed or ignored obvious red flags.”

This is why Clinton will be a disastrous president. But the media, which is full of Trump’s supposed fealty to Putin, covers up Clinton’s venality. Corruption all round.

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Life at ‘GULPTAB’

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The leftwing site Huffington Post “Queer Voices” has posted a funny video take-down of LGBT advocacy groups.

If you didn’t know it was intended as a protest against “the modern climate of corporate LGBT activism,” showing that “Corporates commodify LGBT activism with the same zeal that they’ve commodified self-love,” as the video’s creators state in the accompanying “Queer Voices” article, you’d just think the satire was spot-on (unless, of course, the description is part of the satire).

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BladeWatch

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Increasingly, there is no longer an LGBT rights movement. Clearly, the gay rights movement of the 70s, which became the lesbian and gay rights movement of the 80s and 90s, is gone—for the most part, a victim of its own success after the victories for military inclusion and marriage equality.

Today, there’s an archly politically correct transgender movement that’s focused on bathroom access (a legitimate issue greatly magnified by both sides, with few documented cases of actual discrimination in practice beyond the controversy around minors in public schools) and correct pronouns (often taken to ridiculous extremes). And there’s the Democratic party’s ongoing crusade to recruit LGBT votes and dollars by any means at hand. For the most part, the LGBT media has been thoroughly co-opted into this endeavor.

Lately, reading the Washington Blade is akin to reading The Onion, except that the latter often makes more sense. A few recent examples.

Headline: Trump makes ‘religious liberty’ a priority at anti-LGBT confab.

Excerpt:

Donald Trump didn’t make any explicit anti-LGBT remarks during his speech Friday at the Values Voter Summit, but loaded his remarks with coded language on “religious liberty” to indicate support for undermining LGBT rights.

The meme that religious liberty and the right to religious dissent are not only unacceptable anti-state activity but the worst kind of bigotry is thoroughly entrenched in the left-thought of the day. This, of course, all goes to forcing independent business owners to provide creative services to same-sex weddings, which, along with gender-appropriate pronouns, has become the dominant cause of what presents itself as the LGBT rights movement. That so many of the progressive mindset can’t, or won’t, see how ugly and authoritarian this has become is a sad commentary on moral corruption that dresses itself in the self-righteous narcissism of the politically correct and morally superior, fighting the “bigots” who won’t do as the progressive state decrees, clinging to their false superstitions and mistaken beliefs that individuals have a right not to be compelled to violate their “faith” principles.

Another headline: ID laws may ‘disenfranchise’ 34,000 trans voters.

Excerpt:

More than 34,000 transgender Americans in eight states could be prevented from voting in the November 2016 election because of strict voter identification laws that require voters to present government-issued photo IDs at the polls, according to a newly released report.

Just as, apparently, transgender persons can also no longer fly on airplanes or enter government buildings, since government-issued ID is also required for these activities. The fact that this big lie against voter ID is used with such unembarrassed impunity tells you all you need to know about the dishonesty of the contemporary progressive left and the degree to which LGBT activism and media have sunken down into the muck.

More. No voter fraud in the U.S. to speak of, Democrats say with a straight face. Of course, they know the truth. Corruption all round.

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Progressive ‘Love’

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Via the Washington Post:

As thousands of Donald Trump’s supporters left his rally here this week, they were greeted by protesters who accused them of being, among other things, racist, hateful and uneducated.

“Grow a brain, b—-!” one protester shouted at a Trump backer. Another pointed at rallygoers and yelled: “Racist a——s!” A third held a sign that read: “Make racists afraid again.”

Then they chanted in unison: “Love trumps hate! Love trumps hate! Love trumps hate!”

And they’ll never see the irony.

Daniel Henninger writes in the Wall Street Journal:

The moral clarity that drove the original civil-rights movement or the women’s movement has degenerated into a confused moral narcissism. One wonders if even some of the people in Mrs. Clinton’s Streisandian audience didn’t feel discomfort at the ease with which the presidential candidate slapped isms and phobias on so many people.

Nay. This is what they think.

Even better, via the Washington Blade.

As I said, LGBT supporters stand with Clinton on ‘deplorables’ remark. They can’t see that demonizing your opponent’s voters, rather than criticizing your opponent, is a terrible strategy in a democracy. But then, it’s all about signalling the moral superiority of the progressive base.

In the end, however, Hillary’s LGBT smugfest with Barbra may turn out to be one hell of a costly fundraiser.

Gregory Angelo of the Log Cabin Republicans has observed, correctly, that when it comes to LGBT inclusion Trump is “one of the best, if not the best” (meaning least worst) Republican presidential nominees ever. Democrats, with some justification, can laugh at that as a weak standard. But that’s not what they’re doing—they’re portraying Trump as the most anti-gay Republican ever (the Blade cartoonist warns he’ll be closing down gay bars). That’s just partisan hackery.

And more from supporters of the Party of Love.

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Deplorables and Bigots

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Hillary Clinton made it clear what she thinks of Donald Trump supporters. In comments that were only slightly walked back the next day, she told an LGBT fundraiser in New York City featuring Barbra Streisand:

To just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it.

She further explained:

That other basket of people are people who feel that government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures. They are just desperate for change. Doesn’t really even matter where it comes from.

In other words, Trump voters are either haters or pitiable dupes.

The fundraiser reportedly raised around $6 million, with ticket prices ranging from $1,200 to $250,000, with many paying $50,000, according to reports.

Are some of Trump’s supporters bigots? Sure. But nowhere near half of them, and to say so is to pander to Hillary’s supporters sense of smug moral superiority to the lower orders, particularly the white working and lower-middle classes excluded from the Democrats’ top-bottom coalition of wealthy liberals and minorities—plus, of course, the growing legions of government employees.

One could as easily claim that half of Hillary’s supporters are left-authoritarians (she was endorsed by the head of the Communist Party USA, after all), and be as close to the truth, which is to say, not very truthful at all.

Trump supporters, to a large extent, see failed Democratic policies on the economic and international fronts, and while many believe Trump to be flawed, they view him as a better choice than Hillary when it comes to reviving economic growth and defending American interests. But progressive Democrats can only see the world through a self-justifying lens of rote identity politics, so if you don’t believe in bigger, more intrusive government chipping away at economic prosperity and expressive freedom, you’re a bigot.

A case in point is Obama’s chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission declaring that antidiscrimination laws override other constitutional liberties and those who disagree are (well, you know):

The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts just issued a regulation requiring public accommodations to recognize people on the basis of their gender identity and not biological sex, pointedly noting that regardless of doctrinal issues, “Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public.”

The decision of what church events are secular and which are religious is apparently to be determined by the state.

I’m no fan of Milo Yiannopoulos, the self-aggrandizing openly gay editor at the conservative Breitbart site, but he scores some points about the Democrats’ distorted view of Trump voters in this interview with CNBC. (For the record, I don’t equate most Trump supporters with the alt-right and would agree there are bigots within the alt-right movement who are backing Trump—just as there are left-authoritarians and PC inquisitors supporting Hillary.)

More. David Boaz writes that “it’s an indication that politicians like Clinton and Obama just can’t *imagine* any legitimate reason that people would vote Republican. … I think it’s a problem for politicians not to be able to imagine how anyone could think or vote differently from them.”

(I’ve moved the updates into a new post as they grew beyond a few additional closing thoughts.)

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